ACTIVIST AFGHANISTANWhen the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.
—MALALA YOUSAFZAI
Malala sat squeezed between two friends on the bus. The bus was crowded with friends and teachers from her school, everybody laughing and chatting on the way home. Malala was happy. Last night, she’d studied hard for a test, and today, she’d done well on it.
Suddenly, the bus jerked to a stop. A man got on at the back. He was young and had a beard. He looked nervous.
“Which one of you is Malala?” he yelled over the noise.
The teen’s heart skipped a beat. Was he Taliban? She couldn’t tell—most men in Mingora wore beards these days. The Taliban forced them to. And most Pakistanis knew her name; she’d been in all the papers and on TV for months now.
No one answered the question.
“Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all!” he yelled, pulling a gun from his jacket and waving it around.1 People screamed, and Malala squeezed her best friend Moniba’s hand. A few girls glanced at Malala. The gunman saw them looking—that was all it took.
The man walked up to her seat and glared at her. She was the only girl on the bus whose face was uncovered. He looked in Malala’s eyes and knew it was her. He raised the gun and pointed it at her face.
Then he fired three shots.
Malala was born fifteen years earlier in Mingora, Pakistan, into a Pashtun family of the Sunni Muslim faith. Her father was a teacher who had founded her school and others in their city. But Malala’s birth wasn’t an entirely happy one: “When I was born, some relatives came to our house and told my mother, ‘Don’t worry, next time you will have a son.’ ”2 In Pakistan, parents wanted sons who would take care of them when they got old and could carry on the family name. Girls were seen as a burden.
Malala’s father, however, didn’t see it that way. He and his wife were happy to have a girl, and they named her after a legendary Pashtun poet and warrior girl. They believed Malala could achieve great things, just like a boy. Though all girls in her city did not get to go to school, Malala did—she went to the coed school where her father taught. She loved learning and was an excellent student, always at the top of her class.
The Pashtuns are an ethnic group who live in Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan. They are a tough people who live primarily in the mountains. Throughout history, they’ve fought off many enemies to keep their own traditions and way of life. They are named for the Pashto language they speak.
Her family encouraged her intellectual curiosity and let her stay up late listening to her father and other men talk politics after her younger brothers were sent to bed. The political talk soon turned to Afghanistan, where a violent religious group called the Taliban had taken over the country. They’d enacted laws severely restricting the rights of women. Girls and women couldn’t leave the house without a male relative; they had to wear a burqa, a garment that covered them from head to toe with only their eyes showing; and girls could no longer go to school. Women who disobeyed these new laws were beaten or killed, and there was talk that the Taliban were headed to Pakistan next.
Malala was a pretty normal kid. When she lived in Afghanistan, her favorite book was Twilight, her favorite TV show was Ugly Betty, her favorite singer was Justin Bieber, and her favorite color was pink.
In 2007, when Malala was seven, the Taliban invaded the Mingora. Just like in Afghanistan, they changed life for everyone—but especially for women and girls. Women could no longer vote, have jobs, or even go to a doctor or the hospital! All girls’ schools would soon be closed. If any teachers tried to continue teaching girls, they would be severely punished, and if any girls’ schools stayed open, they would be destroyed.
The Pakistan army arrived to fight the Taliban, and Mingora turned into a war zone. There was shooting in the streets and bombs dropping day and night. Most kids quit going to school—both girls and boys. But Malala’s father refused to close his school, and Malala refused to stop going. She wanted to do something to help fight against the Taliban, so she gave a speech called “How Dare the Taliban Take Away My Basic Right to Education?” at a local club for reporters. Newspapers all over Pakistan printed what she had to say.
When the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) came to Mingora looking for a student or teacher to write about what the Taliban was doing to schools there, no one volunteered; they thought it was too dangerous. Malala desperately wanted her normal life back—she wanted to do something. Using a fake name, Malala took the job and began writing blogs for the BBC Urdu website. Her father thought she would be okay because she was only a seventh grader. He didn’t think anyone would dare to hurt a child.
The BBC website published a series of Malala’s writings, called “Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl.” She had to work like a spy to not get caught—she handwrote notes and passed them to a reporter who scanned and emailed them to the website. Malala wrote about what it was like to live through the battles in her city, how fewer and fewer girls came to school, and finally, how the Taliban stopped her from going to school completely. In January 2009, the Taliban officially made it illegal for girls to go to school, and they blew up nearly 150 girls’ schools.
As of 2016, there are still more than 130 million girls in the world who aren’t able to go to school. The reasons for this are sometimes war, poverty, natural disasters, child marriage, or child labor; but often, it is just because they are girls who live in a place that bans girls’ education. There are more than 20 countries that still discriminate against girls by preventing them from learning.5
Soon, Malala’s diary was read all over Pakistan and in other countries as well. “She had a huge audience, both local and international,” said Aamer Ahmed Khan, former head of BBC Urdu.3 At the same time, Malala and her father were interviewed in a New York Times documentary film, on a Pakistani talk show, and in several large newspapers. They became the face and voice of the Pakistanis who opposed the Taliban.
By the summer of 2009, the Pakistan army had pushed the Taliban out of Mingora and into the hills surrounding the city. The fighters didn’t leave the area, but they no longer controlled Pakistani lives. Girls went back to school, and life returned to almost normal.
In 2011, Malala was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize for her “courageous or otherwise remarkable acts and thoughts . . .”4 Pakistan’s prime minister awarded her the country’s first National Youth Peace Prize (later renamed the National Malala Peace Prize). Malala was a celebrity! Everyone in Pakistan knew who she was and was proud of her bravery.
The Taliban also knew who Malala was. They had seen her on TV and knew what she looked like. On October 9, 2012, fifteen-year-old Malala was riding a bus home from school when a Taliban fighter got on and fired three shots at her, at point-blank range. The first hit her in the head and the other two hit the girls next to her. The shooter left Malala for dead.
But she wasn’t dead. The bullet had entered her left eye socket, traveled down the inside of her face, and then exited into her left shoulder. She was still alive—but barely. The other two girls survived as well. A helicoptor took Malala to a military hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, where surgeons saved her life. The five-hour operation was a success, but Malala got very sick afterward and went into a coma. To get her the best care possible, Pakistan flew her to a hospital in Birmingham, England, that specialized in war injuries like hers. Malala was in the hospital for three months and had several more surgeries, but she came out of her coma and miraculously had no brain damage. It took her many more months of physical therapy to recover her ability to talk and walk.
Malala’s activism has improved education for people around the world but also close to home. After Malala’s shooting, her own mother, who had never been taught to read or write, went to school for the first time. She learned to read and write and studied English. Malala helped her with her homework.
Before the shooting, Malala was well-known in Pakistan. After the shooting, she was famous around the world. Her courage made a huge impact. The United Nations (UN) declared July 12, 2013 (her sixteenth birthday), Malala Day at the UN, and she was invited to come speak to the United Nations Youth Assembly to tell them what could be done to help Pakistani children.
It had taken nine months for Malala to recover, but she was eager to resume her fight—to speak out again. She wanted to show the world that a terrorist with a gun would not stop her. Malala flew to New York City and gave her speech on Malala Day. She said, “They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed. And then, out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions, but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear, and hopelessness died. Strength, power, and courage was born.”6
Malala continued to spread her message to a global audience. Three months after her UN speech, she published a memoir, I Am Malala, which became a worldwide bestseller. Her courage also led to real change in the world. In Pakistan, thousands of people protested the shooting, and two million people signed the Right to Education petition, which was then ratified into Pakistan’s first Right to Education Bill. And in 2013, the UN launched an initiative in Malala’s name, demanding that all children around the world be in school by the end of 2015.
Malala also published a version of her memoir just for kids called I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World. If you’re interested in Malala’s life, you should definitely read it.
Then, in 2014, Malala won the Nobel Peace Prize, which is awarded to people who work to make the world a better place. At just seventeen years old, Malala was the youngest person ever to receive it.
Malala donated the Nobel Prize money—half a million dollars—to her foundation, the Malala Fund. It helps children around the world to get an education, it builds and repairs schools, and it helps girls speak up for their right to go to school. To learn more and to get involved, check out Malala.org.
Since she recovered from the shooting, Malala has been going to school in England. Once again, she is a straight-A student. But she isn’t finished fighting for girls who aren’t able to get the education they deserve. She continues to speak out and raise money for her cause. At her Nobel Prize acceptance speech she said, “I am those sixty-six million girls who are deprived of education. And today I am not raising my voice; it is the voice of those sixty-six million girls.”7
As long as there are girls who are being denied an education, Malala will continue raising her voice.
It feels like this life is not my life. It’s a second life. People have prayed to God to spare me, and I was spared for a reason—to use my life for helping people.
—MALALA YOUSAFZAI