As a child growing up in the town of Shabqadar Fort of the Pakistan province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Noreen Mahmood noticed how classmates from certain religious minorities were shunned. People from what she calls “the mainstream groups” never even liked to be touched by these girls. Though a “mainstreamer” herself, Noreen established herself very early on as a kind of quiet radical. She refused to follow the ways of her own people and deliberately intermingled with these girls.