Determined to win: After a rocket blew her legs off, Iraqi woman triumphs in wheelchair tennis

Iraqi tennis player aims to be Venus in wheelchair

BAGHDAD — As a girl, Zainab Khadim Alwan cut school to watch American tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams play, imagining herself some day becoming just like them.

Even the rocket that blew off her legs four years ago hasn’t dampened her desire to play the game. It’s just that she now does so in a wheelchair.

Alwan is among a growing number of young Iraqis who have turned to competitive sports to learn to live with the physical scars and emotional trauma of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and sectarian bloodshed it unleashed. It’s not easy in a country still suffering from daily violence, and limited help for handicapped people. Alwan and others like her are determined to persevere.