It was quite a short write up in The.Star newspaper on 2nd July about Zahra, the Malaysian teenage tudung-clad lass who aspired to be the first Malaysian girl to successfully swim across the English Channel.
This young inspiring babe, however didn’t make it as strong currents forced her to stop at halfway mark, after battling it out for 12 solid hours. Even though she didn’t quite hit her target, she impressed me to no ends. Gone were the days when nicely covered up Malay girls in tudungs were often synonymous with taking the back seat in things and all those stereotypes which not so kindly sometimes place them into the wallpaper status. So yeah, the strong currents crushed her dreams, but her guts to even have that dream in the first place have won her my respect and of course, I can’t resist making her an example to my students.
