Malala

Malala had told no one that she couldn't swim. After she had managed, with difficulty and under the guidance of her rowing coach, to sit in a rowing boat along with eight others, she thought to herself that even the smallest mistake could be enough to make her fall into the water and drown, of all times during her first month studying at Oxford University. Throughout the whole time, Malala rowed with muscles cramped from fear and prayed inwardly to get through this situation unscathed. After surviving her first university leisure activity, she dropped onto her bed in the student dorm, completely exhausted, and fell asleep.

When she woke up and picked up her phone, her eyes lit up: she saw that the whole world was in an uproar!

News agencies were reporting on Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate, wearing jeans, instead of traditional Pakistani trousers, a T-shirt, and a nylon jacket.

Her photos spread rapidly in the media. In Pakistan, especially among men, she was labeled a "sex symbol" because she wore jeans. People called her a traitor, insulted her, and wondered where her father and brothers were.

Malala: "All this fuss over a pair of jeans? I thought to myself that this reaction could hardly be rational. My mother called me and complained: Everyone in town is talking badly about you!

During a visit we once had to the British royal court, Prince Harry put his hand on my shoulder while taking photos. My mother immediately approached him and told him to remove his hand. Regardless of the breach of royal protocol and my embarrassment, she only thought of the gossip and the malicious tongues of the people in the remote village of Mingora, the place where I was born."

The Daily Mail newspaper reported that Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai faced fierce criticism for wearing jeans. Among thousands of comments published in the media, someone wrote: "She decides about her own body. Please leave her alone."

All the students were sitting in the school bus. They were chatting, going over their lessons, teasing each other, and laughing. Malala, too, was sitting next to her best friend Moniba. They had their heads leaning towards each other, talking about everything imaginable. A bearded young man from the ranks of the Taliban boarded the bus and asked who Malala was. Then he shot three times in her direction and left. Moniba's lap, where Malala's head rested, was covered in blood.

When Malala flew in a helicopter over the Swat Valley in northwestern Pakistan, the place where the failed assassination attempt had occurred, on her way to the opening of her school with 700 students and 40 teachers, she thought the whole time about seeing her best friend Moniba again and asking her, the closest witness to the act, about the details of the attack.

Malala says: "Before we started building this school, it was said that parents would not allow their daughters to go to school. Today, however, after seven years, the number of students has risen to 700, and unfortunately, some are still waiting at the school gates due to a lack of space."

Malala Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997, in Mingora, Pakistan. She attended the school founded by her father. Even in her youth, while still in elementary school, she was preoccupied with the idea of defending the rights of girls and women. She wrote about it and shared her notes via social networks.

On October 9, 2012, she was attacked by the Taliban but survived. On October 15, 2012, she was flown from Islamabad, Pakistan, to Birmingham, England, in a special air ambulance. The plane, which was essentially a mobile flying intensive care unit (ICU), was provided and dispatched by the then Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to save Malala's life. Eventually, the plane landed at Birmingham Airport, and Malala was immediately taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, a hospital known for its specialized trauma center and its extensive experience in treating war casualties of the British armed forces.

At the age of 17, standing behind the microphone as the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate, she said:

"This prize is not just for me. This prize belongs to the forgotten children who crave education. … I am not just a person; I am the voice of 66 million girls who are denied the right to education. … The terrorists tried to stop us and shot at me and my friends on October 9, 2012. They thought the bullets could silence us, but they failed. Out of this silence, thousands of voices rose. Weakness, fear, and hopelessness died in me, and strength, power, and courage were born."

One evening, Malala was sitting in the student dormitory at Oxford University, studying. But due to exhaustion, she couldn't understand anything she was reading. At that moment, her friend Anisa called and invited her to a small hut in the university courtyard, which served as a meeting place for students. Malala immediately agreed and went into the room where Anisa and some other young people were sitting around a table.

On the table stood a strange glass object. It consisted of two nested glass cylinders and a thin tube sticking out of them, a mysterious vessel that looked like a small glass water pipe and had apparently been stolen from the chemistry lab.

Malala asked the young people, "What is that?"

Without answering her, one of the young men held a lit lighter to the glass cylinder. In the next moment, his face disappeared behind a cloud of smoke.

In her memoirs, Malala says: "It wasn't the first time I had seen someone smoke hashish. I had even tried it myself in other places. That evening, my friends recommended that I first inhale the smoke and feel it on my tongue, then swallow it, and finally exhale the smoke very slowly from my chest."

After the students had passed the mysterious glass around the table several times, Malala's gaze fell on the clock. It was one o'clock in the morning, and she decided to go back to her dorm. On the way, she felt as if her body was no longer obeying her. The muscles in her legs cramped, and every step became impossible. Severe stomach cramps even brought her breathing almost to a standstill.

Malala suffered a panic attack and had a nightmare, a nightmare that haunted her repeatedly in the state between sleeping and waking.

At that moment, Malala's thoughts returned to her youth and her 15th year of life. She remembers how a young girl with a thousand dreams was suddenly hurled into an unknown world by multiple gunshots. Days and weeks in the hospital; dozens of surgeries on a disfigured face; merciless bouts of fear, worry, anxiety, and stomach cramps; and a bearded young man with a pistol in his hand, several shots, and a repulsive, indifferent voice saying: "Malala, you must die."

Malala feels her head on Moniba's blood-smeared lap. She remembers being taken away on a stretcher and her father squeezing her hand full of fear and worry.

"Malala, wake up!"

It is this call with which she brings herself back to her senses. With difficulty, she says to Anisa, who is accompanying her: "I can't walk, please help me!"

Anisa brings Malala's half-lifeless body to her room. Malala lies there on the floor, struggling for air. In the state between sleeping and waking, the nightmare returns:

The bus, the bearded man, the gunshots.

And sunk in thoughts about why a girl who shines like a diamond on the international stage must be completely alone with her nightmares. Why does she not dare to talk to her family about her psychological problems? What will become of this PTSD¹ then?

Malala: "In the Pashto language, my mother tongue, there is no word for 'anxiety'. Where I grew up, no one talks about mental health problems. I didn't know such a word either before I came to England. In Pakistan, mental illnesses are either ignored or considered a 'curse of God'. … I was a 17-year-old girl and suffered from depression for a long time. My mother advised me to pray and ask God for forgiveness. In her view, I had strayed from the right path and surrendered to Satan."

With a hoarse voice, Malala says to Anisa: "I have to go to the hospital."

The stomach cramps reach an unbearable peak. She quickly makes it to the toilet and throws up. In the bathroom mirror, she sees her pale face. She is startled. She remembers that when she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the school bus, but in a hospital in Birmingham.

Was there really only hashish in that glass vessel?

The book I Am Malala sold just over two million copies worldwide by 2020 and was translated into more than forty languages. In the book, Malala recounts her life from childhood up to the failed assassination attempt on her, and also describes a large part of her humanitarian and social activities to realize her goals for the education of girls and women, regardless of their nationality.

On July 12, 2013, Malala gave a speech at the United Nations about women's rights and children's right to education. In the same year, she founded the "Malala Fund". The United Nations declared this day, which is also her birthday, "Malala Day". Angelina Jolie, the famous Hollywood actress, provided $200,000 to the "Malala Fund" to support her goals.

Malala's awards are numerous. Many countries have invited her on various occasions and honored her with significant prizes. The most important among them is the Nobel Peace Prize, which, given her young age of 17, is one of the most extraordinary distinctions of its kind.

Her personal wealth, as well as the capital of her foundation and her companies, is estimated at several million dollars.

"Have you ever been up on the university clock tower?"

This seemingly adventurous question is asked by an older student to Malala and her friend Cora in a mysterious, very quiet voice.

The two look at each other, raise their eyes to the tower, and say in astonishment: "No! But how do you get up there? And what if we get caught?"

That night, Malala and her friend appear at the agreed meeting point. The ascent of the Oxford University clock tower begins immediately. The older student leads the way slowly and stealthily, Malala and Cora follow him. On the fourth floor, they enter a room and approach a window. Through this window, the older student climbs with difficulty onto a very narrow railing. Malala looks down and examines the cold, hard ground from the fourth floor.

"Are you coming?" she asks Cora.

Cora shakes her head fearfully: "No."

In her new book Finding My Way, Malala writes: "I knew that her answer didn't hold much significance for me. I wanted to try it out. All my life, others had watched me and determined what I should and shouldn't do. But since I've been at university, I want to be free and decide for myself about the right and wrong choices in my life."

Reaching the highest point of the tower, she takes a deep breath. As she lets her gaze wander over the endless horizon, she tries to calm her excited heartbeat somewhat. In the moonlight, she can make out the university campus and the students sitting together discussing philosophical questions. She looks at the rooms in the student dormitories, where everyone is busy with something different.

And there, withdrawn into herself for a moment, she wishes she could stay up there forever!

It took a long time for Malala to find her life partner. For her, the decision to start a life together with the person she had chosen was not easy. Her own difficult and complicated life on the one hand, and merging with another life that she could hardly get to know due to her constraints on the other hand, made her decision difficult.

The path through the narrow and dark corridors of traditionalism as well as ethnic and tribal traditions sometimes led a girl, who sees herself as a pioneer for young women, to the point of choosing a life alone. She didn't want to marry according to the traditional ideas of the society into which she was born. At the same time, she saw no way out.

Malala: "To this day, I don't understand why people have to get married. Why can't two people live together without signing a piece of paper?"

At the same time, traditions and religious beliefs, family and social considerations, the constant and watchful attention of her bodyguards and the public, the vigilance and curiosity of the media, as well as dozens of other obstacles and barriers, could not prevent what was beating vibrantly in the heart of a young girl.

Malala: "As the sun set and it slowly grew dark, he pulled me toward him, and I rested my head on his shoulder. The silence was so thick that I was afraid the sound of my heart, beating incessantly against my chest, might give me away."

"… I loved Asser, but I didn't want to marry him in the traditional way. … For Asser, too, it didn't matter what name our relationship had. A marriage, like two friends being there for each other or living together … But if we wanted to live together without a marriage contract (Nikah), I would undoubtedly lose my parents' support. And more importantly: a storm would break out in Pakistan."

Asser Malik's family: "We are very happy to have met Malala. She and Asser can make each other happy. Therefore, we ask for your permission to ask for your daughter Malala's hand in marriage."

Malala: "We decided to hold a small Nikah ceremony at my parents' house in Birmingham. It is a simple ceremony in which the bride and groom declare their decision to marry before an Imam and sign a contract."

This day was the 18th of Aban 1400, corresponding to November 9, 2021.

¹ PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)

Sources:

FINDING MY WAY

I Am Malala

Wikipedia

Various Internet websites