Surprisingly, once i started reading it, I easily got hooked. It’s beautifully written. When I say "beautifully written", I am referring only to the writing style because the content is another thing! Eye-opening and shocking are understatements.
So what is the book about? It’s the story of Malala, a girl who campaigned for equal education rights for girls in Pakistan. And guess what? Malala is still a teen! She was born in 1997 so that makes her only about 18 years old today. At age 17, she was co-awarded with a Nobel Prize making her the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. Wow.
If you’re living in a country where there’s easy access to education, Malala's advocacy may not sound such a big deal because it's something that could easily be taken for granted. But in Malala’s world, getting access to education, particularly for girls, might even cost your life.
To give you some context, Malala shared that in Pakistan, life for women is very restricted. The birth of a son, for example, means a day of celebration and the birth of a daughter is a day of sadness (but in Malala's case, her dad still celebrated when she was born).
During her parents’ time, Malala shared that most girls stayed at home waiting to be married. Girls didn't go to school which means they couldn't read or write (like her mom). You know how many illiterate adults are there in Pakistan? 50 Million and most of them are women. I quickly googled Pakistan's population - it's 191M - which represents 26% of the entire population. Simply put, about 1 out of 4 people couldn't read or write. :(
Malala also shared that during her parents' time, there was even a period when a woman’s evidence in court counted for only half of a man’s. Because of this, prisons were full of cases of teenage girls who got raped and pregnant but even if they were the victims, they were sent to prison for adultery. Why? Because they couldn’t produce at least 4 male witnesses to prove that what happened was a crime. Heartbreaking… :(
During Malala's time, girls are already able to go to school but still very few had access. She was lucky to have access because her dad was a teacher and he managed a school.
However, there was a group (the Taliban) who advocated that girls shouldn't go to school - this was their interpretation of the law. Their presence in Pakistan became stronger when the US attacked Afghanistan in 2002. This drove them to seek refuge in the border of Pakistan. Some stayed in Swat Valley, around the border area, where Malala's family lived.
Based on the book, the situation was at its worst around 2008. Here are some snippets which Malala recounted:
- A 23 ft Buddha face carving dating back to the 7th century which is a great part of their history was blown up.
- Bridges had been blown up.
- Cable channels were switched off.
- Children were banned from playing their favorite board games.
- Businesses closed. One of the stories Malala cited was about a Taliban who attacked a shopkeeper because an unaccompanied woman was looking at lipsticks at his beauty shop (because there was an imposed rule that women are not allowed to be in the shop unaccompanied by a male relative). The shopkeeper was badly beaten and nobody helped him.
- Girls were advised to stay home and not go to school. But even if schools followed instructions to close down, the schools were still blown up. By 2008, 400 schools had been destroyed.
- Many girls were killed, their corpses publicly displayed for crimes such as dancing or attending school. She said that it was a common sight to see a Taliban holding up a severed head of a policeman by its hair, blood dripping from the neck.
- Bodies were be dumped in the town square at night so that everyone would see them the next morning on their way to work. There is usually a note that says – "This is what happens to a ____. Do not touch this body til 11am or you will be the next.”
Some of us might have seen similar scenes in fictitious movies but where Malala lived, the scenes were real. :( Living in a constant state of fear is how she described it.
But despite of the scary situation, Malala spoke out by writing an online journal published in a BBC website (this was in 2009, at age 11!). Her journal entries gained her international recognition. Initially, she used a pen name but eventually, she dropped her pseudonym and revealed herself to the public. Because of this, she continued to gain recognition, nominations and win awards globally.
One day in 2012, while going home from school, 2 men flagged down the school bus she was riding. They asked "Who is Malala?". No one actually answered but some threw glances towards her direction and the men shot at her. The bullet entered her head through the left eye; it narrowly missed her brain. The bullet traveled 18 inches down to her left shoulder and stopped there.
It was a miracle that she survived. But it took several surgeries (including removing a part of her skull) by various doctors and several months of physiotherapy before she was able to control her facial muscles again and recover her ability to speak.
(The Taliban, later on, did issue a statement assuming responsibility for shooting her but they said that it wasn’t because of her campaign for education but for speaking against the Taliban, for promoting Western culture and for calling Obama as her idol.)
Malala, though now based in England, continues to fight for free education for all children. She shares that around the world, there are 57M children not in primary school, 32M of whom are girls. Pakistan is one of the worst places with 5.1M children who don’t go to school even if the constitution says that every child has a right to education. :(
BTW, one of the anecdotes from the book which struck me was a dialogue between Malala and her father when she was younger - this was at a time when going to school was still not banned among girls yet.
She complained on how hard life is in Pakistan and her father said that life is even harder for women in Afghanistan. Girls in Afghanistan, her father shared, were banned from laughing out loud, locked or beaten up for wearing nail polish, and their schools were burned. That made Malala realize how free as a bird and how lucky she was.
And here we are, in our part of the world where we enjoy the freedom to do all kinds of activities and to speak our minds, and do not fully realize how lucky we are. What's even sad is sometimes we use this freedom to complain about things which are petty. So the next time we find ourselves about to rant, let's think of all the millions of quiet Malalas all over the world who have to suck everything up because they are deprived of not just voice, but of choice too.
P.S. I am Malala has copyright restrictions in the Philippines so you can't buy the e-book version. I was able to get a physical copy at the Eslite 24/7 bookstore in Taipei.
