Women in The World Summit 2013
Malala reads while recovering from attack in Pakistan (AP Photo/Queen Elizabeth Hospital)
“There was always something special about Malala. Even as a toddler she was drawn to the classroom of her father, who is a teacher and a schoolmaster. Before she was old enough to attend school, she’d sit with his students, she would listen intently absorbing every lesson.
By the time she was eleven, under the name Gul Makai, Malala was secretly sending her journal to the BBC. She called it the Diary of a Pakistani Girl. She wrote of her homeland: ‘there is no peace; it’s beautiful, but there’s no peace. ‘
Her favorite pink dress, she wrote, could put her in danger. The Taliban disapprove of bright colors. But the only thing that really mattered to Malala was school. Her passion for learning expressed through her famous diaries would become far more dangerous than a pink dress. And Malala knew it. And yet she kept speaking out.
‘I have the right to play, I have the right to sing, I have the right to talk, I have the right to go to the market, I have the right to speak. I don’t mind if I have to sit on the floor at school, ‘ she wrote. ‘All I want is an education and I’m afraid of no one.’
Other time, she admitted she was afraid. She wrote that she was having nightmares about the Taliban. She even dared to give an interview about it. ‘I think it often’, she said. ‘I imagine the scene very clearly. But even if they come to kill me, I will tell them that what they’re trying to do is wrong, that education is our basic right’. Her father always thought the Taliban would come for him, not for his daughter, not for a little girl. But they did.
The word had gotten out that the blogger Gul Makai was in fact a young girl named Malala. ‘Which one of you is Malala?’, The gunman asked as he and the others storm the school bus on 12 October (2012). And here’s what the gunman and the Taliban accomplished on that day: they shot her at point-blank range in the head and made her stronger.
In a brutal attempt to silence her voice, it grew louder and she more resolute, calling on the entire world, not just Pakistan, to ensure the right for every girl and boy to an education. ‘It is my right,’ she said, ‘it’s our right.’
She is powerful. But she is also a sweet, creative, loving little girl who wants to help others, to work for others. She doesn’t want to be the center of attention, her goal is progress, not notoriety.
When she was in the hospital, her father saw a poll in the newspaper of the ten most influential people in the world. Malala was number six. President Obama was number seven. Her father brought it to her in the hospital and he said, ‘Look at this, Doesn’t this make you happy?’ and little Malala said, ‘No, I don’t think human being should be categorized in such a way.’
So there’s a lot we can learn from this little girl. ”
Angelina Jolie
