I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World

by Malala Yousafzai

To those children all over the world who have no access to education, to those teachers who bravely continue teaching, and to anyone who has fought for their basic human rights and education.

So I said a quick prayer to God. If it is your will, may I please come in first? I whispered. Oh, and thank you for all my success so far!

I’m named for the great young Pashtun heroine Malalai, who inspired her countrymen with her courage.

Even when I was only seven or eight, I was considered a sophisticated city girl, and sometimes my cousins teased me because I didn’t like to go barefoot and I wore clothes bought at the bazaar, not homemade like theirs. I had a city accent and spoke city slang, so they thought I was modern. If only they knew. People from real cities like Peshawar or Islamabad would have thought me very backward.

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.

Many of the girls in the village—including most of my own cousins—didn’t go to school. Some fathers don’t even think of their daughters as valued members of their families, because they’ll be married off at a young age to live with their husband’s family. “Why send a daughter to school?” the men often say. “She doesn’t need an education to run a house.”

life was even worse for women in Afghanistan, where a group called the Taliban had taken over the country. Schools for girls had been burned to the ground, and all women

But my father told me not to worry. “I will protect your freedom, Malala,” he said. “Carry on with your dreams.”

He told me that these children were supporting their families, selling whatever they found for a few rupees; if they went to school, their families would go hungry. As we walked back home, I saw tears on his cheek.

I believe there is something good for every evil, that every time there’s a bad person, God sends a good one.

They took in many of the eleven thousand orphaned children. In our culture, orphans are usually adopted by the extended family, but the earthquake had been so bad that entire families had been wiped out or lost everything and were in no position to care for additional children. Many of the orphans went to live in fundamentalist madrasas.

Guess many became Talibans

The whole country was in shock for a long time after the earthquake. We were vulnerable. Which made it that much easier for someone with bad intentions to use a nation’s fear for his gain.

Generally, when a Pashtun man loses an argument, he never really forgets. Or forgives.

They wouldn’t take any other classes: no science, no math, no literature. They would study only Arabic so that they could recite the Holy Quran. They didn’t learn what the words actually meant, though, only how to say them.

Keeping them ignorant

“It’s a good thing to come in second,” he said. “Because you learn that if you can win, you can lose. And you should learn to be a good loser, not just a good winner.”

Terrifying memories of the earthquake the previous year were fresh in their minds; some of them had buried children and husbands and were still grieving. I knew what this radio mullah was saying wasn’t true. An earthquake is a geological event that can be explained by science, I wanted to tell them.

Rigious abuse over science

How had this happened? How did an unschooled fanatic turn himself into a kind of radio god? And why was no one prepared to defy him?

Hundreds gathered to watch the floggings, shouting “Allahu akbar”—God is great!—with each lash.

Why people justifyy violence in the name of God?

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.

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 2008 alone, the Taliban bombed two hundred schools. Suicide bombings and targeted killings were regular occurrences.

“Are you scared now?” I asked. “At night our fear is strong, jani,” he said. “But in the morning, in the light, we find our courage again.”

“We Pashtuns are a religion-loving people,” she said. “Because of the Taliban, the whole world is claiming we are terrorists. This is not the case. We are peace-loving. Our mountains, our trees, our flowers—everything in our valley is about peace.”

But maybe it was something more. Maybe that girl in the mirror, that girl who imagined speaking to the world, was the Malala I would become. So throughout 2008, as our Swat was being attacked, I didn’t stay silent. I spoke to local and national TV channels, radio, and newspapers—I spoke out to anyone who would listen.

I played with my shoebox dolls and thought: The Taliban want to turn the girls of Pakistan into identical, lifeless dolls.

But 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.

“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.

There he found a letter the army had left for him. It blamed the people of Swat for allowing the Taliban to take control of our homeland. “We have lost so many of the precious lives of our soldiers—and this is due to your negligence,” the letter said. “Long Live the Pakistani Army!” My father shrugged. “How typical,” he said. “First the people of Swat fall under the spell of the Taliban, then they are killed by the Taliban, and now they are blamed for the Taliban!”

That sealed my determination to become a politician—so I could take action and not just ask for help from others.

I knew in my heart that any one of us could have achieved what I had; I was lucky that I had parents who encouraged me despite the fear we all felt.

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.

And then he said, “People experience both joy and suffering in their lives. Now you have had all the suffering at once, and the rest of your life will be filled with only joy.”

My father was unhappy, but, again, he held his tongue. My father, who had dared to talk back to the Taliban, was learning that sometimes saying nothing speaks just as loudly.

The Taliban shot me to try to silence me. Instead, the whole world was listening to my message now.

Afterward, he said I was “a remarkable girl and a credit to Pakistan.” He was the leader of my country, but he was treating me with respect, like I was the VIP!

Talib had fired three shots at point-blank range at three girls in a school bus—and none of us were killed. One person had tried to silence me. And millions spoke out. Those were miracles, too.

So, yes, the Taliban have shot me. But they can only shoot a body. They cannot shoot my dreams, they cannot kill my beliefs, and they cannot stop my campaign to see every girl and every boy in school.

On my sixteenth birthday, I was given the most extraordinary gift: I was invited to speak to the United Nations. It

And even President Barack Obama and his family. (I was respectful, I believe, but I told him I did not like his drone strikes on Pakistan, that when they kill one bad person, innocent people are killed, too, and terrorism spreads more. I also told him that if America spent less money on weapons and war and more on education, the world would be a better place. If God has given you a voice, I decided, you must use it even if it is to disagree with the president of the United States.)