MALALA
The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Changed the World
Malala Yousafzai with Patricia McCormick
Hachette (Young Readers Edition)
244 pages; Rs 299
Everybody knows Malala Yousafzai and the story of the girl who stood up for the right to education, was shot by the Taliban for her pains and miraculously survived. So when I picked up the autobiography of this 16-year-old girl, I expected to find a glorified story of her trials and tribulations. That it certainly was. But, unexpectedly, it also turned out to be an absorbing account of overlapping narratives - of a country (Pakistan) undergoing change, of a family whose values of free thinking and integrity brought it to the forefront of the war against terrorism, of a beautiful father-daughter relationship to which most girls will relate, and of a girl's coming of age.
Starting with a prologue in which Ms Yousafzai reflects upon the fateful day that began just like any other, the narrative builds momentum towards the shooting, ending with the refrain, "I am Malala and this is my story."
Written together with Patricia McCormick, an American journalist and two-time National Book Award finalist, the book is a young readers' edition of the autobiography released in October 2013. The fact that its target readers are young adults is clear from the way Ms Yousafzai's bildungsroman has been structured. The progression in Malala's age is reflected in the narrative throughout the five parts of the book. Part one begins with the innocent tales of a girl who loves pizza, thinks Bella from Twilight is too fickle and wants a magic pencil from God. By part five, we have her grown up, worried about who is going to bear the cost of all the expensive treatment she is getting when she finds herself in a hospital in Birmingham.
The juxtaposition of issues such as terrorism and the political turmoil in her country with prosaic concerns such as not being tall enough does not let the reader forget that this is, essentially, the story of a young girl. So where Ms Yousafzai prays to God for the safety of her father since they have just received an anonymous letter threatening to kill him, she also prays to be made taller. After all, "if [she] was going to become a politician and work for [her] country ... [she] would have to at least be able to see over the podium".
In detailing life before the Taliban in the Swat valley, the book presents a picture of a Pakistan quite unknown to the younger generation and almost forgotten by the older one - one that is not riddled by civil strife and where life was once normal. In Ms Yousafzai's life, we get a sense of a culture and people taken hostage by terrorism.
A question the world asked when a 16-year-old Ms Yousafzai talked about education and its importance at the United Nations was where this young girl had acquired these ideas and courage. You discover the answer in the relation that Ms Yousafzai has with her father. A staunch supporter of education himself, Ziauddin Yousafzai ran the Khushal High School in the Swat valley, the one that her daughter attended. She describes it as "a heaven ... [where] we flew on wings of knowledge". For somebody whose father ran a school despite threats from the Taliban, the vehement support for education seems only natural. Her own fearlessness emanates from the freedom her father gave her to not only have opinions, but to voice them in a country where women are not allowed to think for themselves. Ms Yousafzai's father not only comes across as a mentor to his daughter, but also the guardian angel who asserted that his daughter "will live as free as a bird" to anyone who thought her rude or bold because of her outspoken nature.
We see his hardiness, along with her mother's support, in keeping the school running, undeterred by Taliban bombings of various other schools. In her persistence for gaining knowledge, we see Ms Yousafzai going to school with her books hidden under her shawl, studying and excelling, despite the very real threat of death stalking the streets and Taliban vigilantes ready to make a public spectacle out of anyone disobeying the Taliban laws.
The narrative comes a full circle in chapter 23, which talks about the day of the shooting, the incident with which we started out with in the prologue.
Even the most detached reader will find it difficult not to get drawn in by this endearing narrative, simply told, in 200-odd pages. So much so that we share her happiness at being able to study freely, without being scared, as well as her nostalgia for the beautiful valley of Swat and her heaven, the Khushal High School.
The book achieves what autobiographies are for - detailing the life events of a person. But most importantly and obviously, this one makes a case for education. It is a powerful appeal for learning voiced in the simple words of a teenager who has certainly experienced more in a short span of 16 years than most of us will in our entire lives. In the story of the girl who took a bullet for the cause of the insatiable desire to know more, we have a lesson on how noble ideas cannot ever be silenced.
