Words of a world changer

by Peter Bradshaw

I recently read the book, I Am Malala. It is an autobiography. Malala is a world changer and this is her story. She is born in Pakistan, Mingora and is a Pashtun from birth. She, unlike other girls, is very lucky and has a very supportive father who owns a school.

Pic: ourtesy touchbaseonline.ca

Suddenly, a man named Fazlullah starts talking on the radio about stopping girls from going to school, and keeping women at home. Then, one day, when she sees children working at the garbage dump instead of being at school, she realizes that she has to do something about it. Malala and her school friends are always talking about what they heard on the radio, and they get really scared when something even worse happens.

Fazlullah forms the Taliban and starts doing bad things to women in Afghanistan. He has now said that women should not be allowed out of the house without a known male accompanying her. If they went out without a male relative, or without wearing a proper burqa,he and his followers would throw acid on their face! Malala gets even more upset, and when she sees that the Taliban have come to Mingora and are putting banners up which stop women from leaving their homes without a male. She begins to talk to God and asks Him about how she can help.

Conversing with God

One day, Malala wakes up and has an idea. She will ignore the chat about the Taliban and instead talks about the things that girls her age should be talking about: TV shows, friends, and plans for the weekend. But now the Taliban is becoming even crueler: They sold women who don't wear a burqa and beat-up men who refuse to accompany their wife and daughter. Mingora was becoming an unsafe place!

One of Malala's father's friends on the BBC news channel, now wants a girl to write a journal about the Taliban and how it affects her life. Malala is keen and gets a pseudonym: Gul Makai - a Pashtun folktale character. One day, Malala's father finds a note on the door of his room saying,

"Close down this school or otherwise you know what we can do!" Malala's father wrote back: "Please don't kill my students. You can hurt me but not my students." By this point, Malala has had many interviews and is given the chance to talk against the Taliban. She says that the only thing she wants is for girls to have a right to learn, have a good education, and grow up to be whatever they want to be.

Little did she know that the Taliban was hearing all this. Soon, she became a target of the Taliban who followed her on her way home, and shot her right near the brain. Malala declares that she doesn't remember any of it: the shooting, bleeding, travelling to four different hospitals. Instantly, Malala was moved from a hospital in Mingora to Peshawar, and then to Rawalpindi. Finally, she ended up in the Queen Elizabeth's Hospital in Birmingham. When Malala woke up, she couldn't speak because there was a tube in her throat. She received a pink notebook and a white teddy bear.

The pink notebook was to write whatever she could not say aloud, and the teddy bear was to comfort her. Malala couldn't hear properly, was seeing double, couldn't close her left eye, couldn't move her left hand, and whenever she shook her head, had an intense pain.

After a long time in the hospital, she was a little bit stronger and her sight was much better. The doctors inserted a small hearing device in her ear so that she could hear better and she started to live in Birmingham with her family.

One afternoon, in the middle of her physics lesson, the headmistress called her outside and Malala thought 'what happened? Am I in trouble?' In fact, she was not in trouble at all! She had won the Nobel Prize along with one other man called Kailash Satyarthi.

That was when she realized how much her teachers in Birmingham cared for her. They had tears in their eyes. Malala was invited to talk to the whole school as well as the UN! Malala is still news channels and gives speeches and interviews. What I like about the book: I was so hooked that I finished it in one day! It is a very inspiring book to me.

I find it a co-incidence that the lesson Malala found in the Wizard Of Oz book is the lesson that I found in this book: If you really want to do something, you can - even with hurdles along your way.

Isn't it amazing how a child can have the courage to speak up against such a powerful group, especially when her future is so unpredictable?

I think the hardest part of her life is was when the Taliban said that they were forced to shoot her because she was speaking against them. But in spite of her efforts, they continued not to let women do have their own free will.

- Guardian.uk