Iraqi table tennis player Nur al-Huda Sarmad adjusts her wheelchair before striking the ball into play, braving sweltering heat, social stigma and inadequate facilities as she dreams of taking her team to the Paralympics.
Sarmad and seven other Iraqi women who live with disabilities train three times a week at a community center in the southern Iraqi city of Diwaniyah, preparing for an upcoming tournament that could qualify them for the national Paralympic team.
The facilities are far from Olympic-standard.
Photo: AFP
“The tennis tables are broken, there are power outages and we even have to buy our own paddles,” said Sarmad, 25.
With no dedicated training facility, the team often has to share the three second-hand tables at the public community center with visitors.
In the scorching Iraqi summer they cannot turn on the fans, which would disrupt the movement of the balls.
The air conditioner that could provide some relief remains off-limits in a country grappling with chronic power cuts, especially in summer when temperatures approach 50°C. The center is powered by a generator, but it can barely sustain the essentials.
These practical issues “affect our training” and hinder the players’ progress, Sarmad said.
The team also faces insufficient government funding for sports, and conservative views on women’s rights and people with disabilities.
Paralympic champion Najlah Imad, the first Iraqi to snare a gold medal in table tennis, said that “despite the difficult circumstances, nothing is impossible.”
Imad, who now relies on sponsorship deals, encouraged her fellow players to keep fighting.
“You can do anything,” she said.
Sarmad, who has already won several medals including bronze in a tournament in Thailand, takes pride in the fact that despite the many challenges, “we overcame all this, we became players.”
The state-owned community center provides the team a stipend equivalent to US$75 per month to cover transportation costs, but the players had to purchase their professional paddles — at a cost of US$200 — out of their own pockets.
The players often have to rely on taxis to travel to training sessions, but “sometimes cabs refuse to take disabled people,” Sarmad said.
Coach Mohammed Riyad, 43, said that table tennis “has developed in Diwaniyah solely through personal efforts... due to the lack of support from the state.”
Riyad, a member of the Iraqi Paralympic Committee, said that funding sports was not a priority in a country where decades of conflicts, neglect and endemic corruption have devastated infrastructure.
Through the Paralympic Committee, he has managed to acquire old equipment for Sarmad and her fellow players.
He said that “the state only focuses on football, despite the achievements of table tennis players” like Imad, who brought home the Paralympic gold from last year’s Paris Games.
Iraq has a long tradition of women’s sports, with teams competing in regional soccer, weightlifting and boxing tournaments.
However, there is also vocal opposition seeking to exclude women and bar mixed-gender events.
In southern Iraq, a largely conservative area where Sarmad’s team is based, organizers of a marathon last year made it a men-only event after a social media controversy over women’s participation in sports.
Iraqis living with disabilities often face additional challenges amid a general lack of awareness about their rights and inclusion.
For award-winning table tennis player Iman Hamza, 24, society mistakenly sees women with disabilities like her “as helpless people who cannot do anything.”
“But we became world champions,” she said.
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