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September 18 - September 19, 2024
I’m named for the great young Pashtun heroine Malalai, who inspired her countrymen with her courage.
I would often wander away from the children’s games, tiptoe through the women’s quarters, and join the men. That, it seemed to me, was where something exciting and important was happening. I didn’t know what it was, exactly, and I certainly didn’t understand the politics, but I felt a pull to the weighty world of the men.
I loved to hear the men debate politics. But mostly I loved sitting among them, hypnotized by this talk of the big world beyond our valley.
I was far luckier than most girls in one other way, too: My father ran a school. It was a humble place with nothing more than blackboards and chalk—and it was right next to a smelly river. But to me it was a paradise.
Even my own mother, who’d grown up in the village, couldn’t read. It is not at all uncommon for women in my country to be illiterate, but to see my mother, a proud and intelligent woman, struggle to read the prices in the bazaar was an unspoken sadness for both of us, I think.
But when I saw how hard these women’s lives were, I was confused and sad. Why were women treated so poorly in our country? I asked my father this, and he told me that life was even worse for women in Afghanistan, where a group called the Taliban had taken over the country.
I believe there is something good for every evil, that every time there’s a bad person, God sends a good one. So I decided it was time to talk to God about this problem. Dear God, I wrote in a letter. Did you know there are children who are forced to work in the rubbish heap? I stopped. Of course he knew! Then I realized that it was his will that I had seen them. He was showing me what my life might be like if I couldn’t go to school. Until then, I had believed a magic pencil could change the world. Now I knew I would have to do something. I didn’t know what it was. But I asked God for the
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although my father’s school wasn’t really making a profit, he gave away more than a hundred free places to poor children. He wished he could have given away more. My mother, meanwhile, started serving a few girls breakfast at our house each day. “How can they learn,” she said, “if their stomachs are empty?”
My school was a heaven. Because inside the Khushal School, we flew on wings of knowledge. In a country where women aren’t allowed out in public without a man, we girls traveled far and wide inside the pages of our books. In a land where many women can’t read the prices in the markets, we did multiplication. In a place where, as soon as we were teenagers, we’d have to cover our heads and hide ourselves from the boys who’d been our childhood playmates, we ran as free as the wind. We didn’t know where our education would take us. All we wanted was a chance to learn in peace. And that is what we
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Through his illegal radio broadcasts, he encouraged parents to refuse polio vaccinations for their children. He claimed that this medical aid was not meant to help; he said it was a ploy by Western countries to harm Muslim children.
Fazlullah claimed that watching movies and TV shows was a sin because it meant that women would look upon men, and men would look upon women, who were forbidden to them.
The government may not be behaving as it should, but could we run our classroom a bit more like a democracy? We hit on an idea: Since the most studious girls always sat up front, we would switch seats every week. If you got to the front row one week, you’d find yourself in the back the next. It was a bit of a game, but it was our small way of saying that all girls—and all people—are equal.
God, I said when I went to bed, I know you are busy with many, many things around the world. But do you see what’s happening here in Swat?
Most Pashtun women would cry and beg and cling to their husbands’ sleeves. But most Pashtun men would ignore their wives. Few would have even consulted with them in the first place. But my parents were not like other parents. My father is like a falcon, the one who dared to fly where others would not go. And my mother is the one with her feet firmly planted on the ground.
I thought: What have I done wrong that I should be afraid? All I want to do is go to school. And that is not a crime. That is my right. Besides, I was the daughter of Ziauddin Yousafzai, the man who had dared to talk back to the Taliban. I would hold my head high—even if my heart was quaking.
As everyone around me cried, I kept my secret. I told myself, “I will continue this journey of fighting for peace and democracy in my country.” I was only ten, but I knew then that somehow I would find a way.
From my spot on the floor in my parents’ room, I recited a special verse from the Holy Quran, the Ayat al-Kursi. Say it three times and your home will be safe from devils and any kind of danger. Say it five times and your neighborhood is safe. Say it seven times and your whole town is safe. I said it seven, eight, nine times, so many times I lost track. Then I spoke to God. Bless us and protect us, I’d say. Bless our father and family. Then I’d correct myself. No, bless our street. No, our neighborhood. Bless all of Swat. Then I’d say, No, bless all of Pakistan. No, not just Pakistan. Bless
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when our teachers, like Miss Ulfat in primary school, said “Excellent!” or “Well done!” our hearts would fly. Because when a teacher appreciates you, you think, I am something! In a society where people believe girls are weak and not capable of anything except cooking and cleaning, you think, I have a talent. When a teacher tells you that all great leaders and scientists were once children, too, you think, Maybe we can be the great ones tomorrow. In a country where so many people consider it a waste to send girls to school, it is a teacher who helps you believe in your dreams.
I whispered a quick prayer for the children who’d lost their school and another to protect the Khushal School. Please, God, I prayed, help us to protect our valley and to stop this violence.
I had grown up hearing the word terrorism, but I never really understood what it meant. Until now. Terrorism is different from war—where soldiers face one another in battle. Terrorism is fear all around you. It is going to sleep at night and not knowing what horrors the next day will bring. It is huddling with your family in the center-most room in your home because you’ve all decided it’s the safest place to be. It is walking down your own street and not knowing whom you can trust. Terrorism is the fear that when your father walks out the door in the morning, he won’t come back at night.
how can a person live when she is afraid of a room in her own home? How can a mother buy food for her family if the market is a war zone? How can children gather for a game of cricket if a bomb could go off under their feet?
every morning, before I rounded the corner on the way to the Khushal School, I closed my eyes and said a prayer—afraid to open them in case the school had been reduced to rubble overnight. This was what terrorism felt like.
“At night our fear is strong, jani,” he said. “But in the morning, in the light, we find our courage again.”
“We are afraid of no one, and we will continue our education. This is our dream.” And I knew in that instant that it wasn’t me, Malala, speaking; my voice was the voice of so many others who wanted to speak but couldn’t.
Within days we had gone from twenty-seven girls in our grade to ten. I was sad and frustrated—but I also understood. In our culture, girls do not defy the males in their families. And I realized that the fathers and brothers and uncles who made my friends stay home were doing so out of concern for their safety.
whenever I’d catch myself giving in to a feeling of defeat, I’d have one of my talks with God. Help us appreciate the school days that are left to us, God, and give us the courage to fight even harder for more.
My father had always stood by me. Could I stand by him? I knew without even thinking that I could. I would do anything to be able to continue going to school. But first we went to my mother. If she was afraid, I wouldn’t do it. Because if I didn’t have her support, it would be like speaking with only half my heart.
Many people in Swat saw danger everywhere they looked. But our family didn’t look at life that way. We saw possibility. And we felt a responsibility to stand up for our homeland. My father and I are the starry-eyed ones. “Things have to get better,” we always say. My mother is our rock. While our heads are in the sky, her feet are on the ground. But we all believed in hope.
I was writing from the privacy of my bedroom, using a secret identity, but thanks to the Internet, the story of what was happening in Swat was there for the whole world to see. It was as if God had at long last granted my wish for that magic pencil.
As soon as I left the house, I thought for a second about turning back. We’d heard stories of people throwing acid in the faces of girls in Afghanistan. It hadn’t happened here yet, but with everything that had happened, it didn’t seem impossible. But somehow my feet carried me forward, all the way to school.
“They cannot stop me. I will get my education,” I told the cameraman. “If it is in home, school, or anyplace. This is our request to the world—save our schools, save our Pakistan, save our Swat.” I sounded hopeful, but in my heart, I was worried.
I learned another lesson watching the show. Although Betty and her friends had certain rights, women in the United States were still not completely equal; their images were used to sell things. In some ways, I decided, women are showpieces in American society, too.
Meanwhile, my little brother Atal and his friends had started playing a new game. Instead of playing parpartuni, he and his friends were playing Army vs. Taliban. Children all over our neighborhood made pretend weapons out of whatever they could find. They fashioned guns out of sticks or folded paper, and grenades out of old water bottles. War and terrorism had become child’s play.
In the video, a teenage girl wearing a black burqa and red trousers was lying facedown on the ground being flogged in broad daylight by a bearded man in a black turban. “Please stop it!” she begged in between screams and whimpers as each blow was delivered. “In the name of Allah, I am dying!” You could hear the Talib shouting, “Hold her down. Hold her hands down.” At one point during the flogging, her burqa slipped up to reveal her trousers. The beating stopped for a moment so the men could cover her up again, then they went back to beating her. A crowd had gathered but did nothing.
“No Pashtun leaves his land of his own sweet will. Either he leaves from poverty or he leaves for love.” So goes a famous Pashtun tapa, a couplet my grandmother taught me. Now we were being driven out by a force the writer could never have imagined—the Taliban.
Then, when she said I would have to leave my schoolbooks behind, I nearly cried, too. I loved school, and all I cared about were my books! We were children, after all, children with childish concerns, even with a war on the way.
Internally displaced persons. That’s what we were now, not Pakistanis, not Pashtuns. Our identity had been reduced to three letters: IDP.
I could not tell what his laughter meant. But I understood his words. The education of girls was far down on the list of issues that Pakistan faced.
I prayed for my father’s safety every day. I prayed for my school to remain open and for the bombed-out schools to be rebuilt. I also continued to ask God to make me taller. If I was going to become a politician and work for my country, I told God, I would have to at least be able to see over the podium.
When it was announced that the prize would be awarded annually and be named the Malala Prize in my honor, I noticed a frown on my father’s face. In our country’s tradition, we don’t honor people in this way while they are alive, only after they have died. He was a bit superstitious and thought it was a bad omen.
My proud, fearless Pashtun father was shaken in a way I’d never seen. And I knew why. It was one thing for him to be a target of the Taliban. He had always said, “Let them kill me. I will die for what I believe in.” But he had never imagined the Taliban would turn their wrath on a child. On me.
“Aba,” I said. “You were the one who said if we believe in something greater than our lives, then our voices will only multiply, even if we are dead. We can’t stop now.”
On the trip back home, though, I asked myself what I would do if a Talib came to kill me. Well, I would just take my shoe and hit him. But then I thought: If you hit a Talib with your shoe, there is no difference between him and you. You must not treat others with cruelty. You must fight them with peace and dialogue. “Malala,” I said to myself. “Just tell him what is in your heart. That you want an education. For yourself. For all girls. For his sister, his daughter. For him.” That’s what I would do. Then I would say, “Now you can do what you want.”
