Malala Youfsafzai has clearly not wasted any time. A year after she was shot by the Taleban on Oct. 9, 2012, her biography was published with the help of a seasoned journalist, Christina Lamb who has been reporting on Pakistan and Afghanistan since 1987. ‘I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taleban’ sheds light on the personality of this courageous Pakistani schoolgirl who has touched people around the world with her faith and her duty to the cause of girl’s education.
In recognition of her determination and advocacy, Malala was honored with the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2013 and she was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. She had just turned seventeen and became the youngest ever recipient of such a prestigious honor.
What struck me in this memoir is the importance Malala gives to her father.
“I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden away behind a curtain, their role in life is simply to prepare food and give birth to children.”
But Malala’s father, Ziauddin was different. The day his daughter was born he told people: “I know there is something different about this child.” He named her after Malala of Maiwand who is known as the greatest heroine of Afghanistan. This daughter of a shepherd in Maiwand, a small town nestled in the dusty plains of Kandahar, inspired the Afghan army to defeat the British in 1880 during one of the biggest battles of the Second Anglo-Afghan War.
However, it is obvious that her father was her greatest mentor. She admired his strength of character and the way he made a name for himself through education. Malala has undoubtedly inherited from him, both his personality and determination. She decided at an early age that she would not be forced to remain indoors according to the tradition and she always heard her father say: “Malala will be free as a bird.”
A few months after she was born, her parents moved into three rooms set above the school founded by her father who was at the same time the teacher, the accountant, and the principal. He also swept the floors, cleaned the bathrooms and repaired the electricity or the water pump whenever needed. Malala grew up so to speak in a school: “The school was my world and my world was the school.”
And that was especially the case when the Taleban took over the Swat Valley. School kept her going more than ever. Fearing every man might be a “talib”, she and her comrades hid their school books in their shawls. “When we decorated our hands with henna for holidays and weddings, we drew calculus and chemical formulae instead of flowers and butterflies.”
At the same time, Malala began giving frequent radio and TV interviews. One day, Shiza Shahid, a student at Stanford University who came from Islamabad, phoned up after watching a documentary “Class Dismissed in Swat Valley.” “We saw then the power of the media and she became a great support to us.”
What is remarkable about Malala is that she became interested in politics from an early age. She was particularly concerned with matters closer to home like the rubbish-dump children squatting in her street but she knew that waiting for the government to help would avail to nothing and she became an activist: “If I can help support one or two children and another family supports one or two then between us we can help them all.”
A year before she was shot by the Taleban, Malala learned that she was one of five nominees for the International Peace Prize of Kids Rights, a children’s advocacy group based in Amsterdam. She didn’t win but shortly after she received a cheque for half a million rupees for her campaign for girls’ rights.
Then, one day, while she was in class, she was informed that she had won Pakistan’s first ever National Peace Prize along with half a million rupees. She had just turned fourteen. All this productive activism did not go unnoticed.
During a trip to Karachi in January 2012, Malala learns from Shehla Anjum, a Pakistani journalist, living in Alaska that she and Shah Begum had been threatened by the Taleban.
After these threats, her mother didn’t want her daughter to walk anywhere and she insisted that Malala took a rickshaw to school and return home in the bus although the school was only five minutes away.
And it was, several weeks later, on the bus driving her home that she was shot with three bullets. As the news broke out, family, close friends and everybody from the neighborhood gathered at Malala’s home. As her mother, Toor Pekai, sat on the prayer mat reciting from the Qur’an, she told the women: “Don’t cry: Pray!”
Although Malala’s father has played a dominant role in her life, Malala has highlighted her mother’s beautiful character.
“Though my mother was not educated, she was the practical one in the family, the doer while my father was the talker”. She was known for her acts of generosity, visiting people in hospitals, and helping people in need. Toor Pekai also understood that it was difficult for poor people to learn when they were not eating enough food so she cooked breakfast for some of the girls.
However, since Malala’s parents and brothers have joined her in Birmingham, life has changed for Toor Pekai. Like her children, she is also studying: she attends a language school five days a week to learn how to read, write and speak English.
And it is now her husband’s turn to prepare breakfast for all the family before he rushes out to his job. He is education attaché at the Pakistani Consulate and an adviser for global education for the United Nations.
As for Malala, since her arrival in Great Britain, she has not ceased being an activist. She has set up the Malala Fund, an organization she dreamed of even before she was shot. The Malala Fund believes that every girl, and boy have both the power to change the world and all they need is a chance.
The Fund aspires to invest in efforts that empower local communities and help develop innovative solutions in order to deliver the tools, ideas and networks which can help girls find their voice and create a better tomorrow.
Malala has traveled to conflict-hit areas to raise awareness about the plight of children who are deprived of an education and has started projects in Pakistan, Kenya and Nigeria. She is also campaigning in Jordan for the education of Syrian refugees by integrating them into local schools.
At the end of the book, we can only agree with Malala that if her world has changed, she has not. This book is only the beginning of her story.
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