Who Was Malala's First Visitor Besides Her Family?
"When I looked in her eyes that forenoon my heart was filled with joy," says Ziauddin Yousafzai, recalling the day he met his girl Malala for the beginning fourth dimension. "It was morning time time, and her eyes were open, and I thought, 'she's non a new-built-in mayhap she's been in that location for a week'…Such open eyes. Such vivid optics. Beautiful optics."
He named her afterwards Pakistani folk hero Malalai of Maiwand because she was one of the few Pakistani women he could think of who had been granted her own identity. A few weeks later his cousin visited with a family tree.
"And when I looked at the tree they were all men," he says. "I included Malala'southward proper noun on that tree, and it was similar a shocking surprise for him…'Oh girls' names are not there.' I only smiled...The same cousin who had this grimace on his confront, later when Malala became very popular in Pakistan for her activism and education campaign, he wrote a long poem to praise her. "It'due south important to remember that people change."
His own strong conventionalities in equality come partly from reading, which is why he is such an advocate for education, and partly from the fact that he was a sensitive boy with a stammer who had his own experiences of bullying.
He says from an early age it seemed wrong that he was seen as the virtually of import sibling because he was a boy.
"My sisters were more than handsome than me. They were more eloquent than me. They were more fluent [but] my parents' dreams for me were very big. They wanted to run across me be a medico, a very important person in the club, to be the kind of person who tin can earns a lot of money...Merely for my sisters the only dream was to find a husband and go them married equally soon as possible."
Forced marriage
Several years later, when his cousin ran abroad from a forced marriage and ended up beingness shot and injured, he vowed to help change things.
"Information technology was a life changing indicate in my life. I wrote a poem…'I swear on every sigh of a pain, all girls, I will stand with you. I will break all these shackles and chains of slavery…e are dreaming for a new historic period'."
And and then he began to speak out. The one thing Ziaddin Yousafzai knows how to do is speak. He nonetheless stammers occasionally, simply he is a born orator.
"That is a success for all stammerers in the globe. When I was 13 I told [my father] that I wanted to requite a spoken communication in the school. In that location was some kind of contest…The other boys who were speaking became very popular in the schoolhouse, and I wanted to be like them. Information technology was natural. My male parent was a fleck dislocated, merely he wrote me a speech…After the voice communication a instructor whispered in my ear in Pashto, 'y'all spread the fire.' Those words were and so powerful for me."
As a teacher himself he used to get upset "when I asked a child to say something and there was silence…I would say (he whispers) delight, if I can speak with stammering, you can!"
When he started his school information technology quickly became "a centre for social modify". He would make arguments against kid marriages. He convinced parents to permit their daughters to exist educated. He met resistant fathers who are now proud of their educated girls.
He says it is all about persuasion and respectful statement. "Change occurs when you lot work with sincerity and with strategy." And when Malala was older she became a "comrade in this mission".
"We used to go to villages and she'd run into girls, and I would talk to the men about girls' educational activity."
Very beautiful
What happened when the Taliban came to the Swat valley?
"Earlier Talibanisation we had wonderful peace. Queen Elizabeth chosen Swat the Switzerland of the due east. It'due south very cute. We had no bug. We used get out in the street at midnight drinking Pakistani tea.
"But and then Taliban came to Swat and local people turned into Taliban because of their politics and poverty...[soon] we could see these Taliban in our street, and they bombed more than 400 schools, the majority of them girls' schools. Information technology was and then shocking…That was a time when Malala used to go to school hiding her books in her shawl."
It began gradually, he says, starting with the radio propaganda of Maulana Fazlullah. "The worst matter that he did was he took women into confidence. He used to speak to them directly…'We are working for Islam'. He did propaganda against girls' education. He used to name and appreciate girls and families who left school...He became more militant. He became more than and more violent, and we had suicide attacks every day. One day in Mingora more than 52 people were killed and more than than a 100 were wounded. Can you imagine?"
How did he discover the courage to speak out in those circumstances?
"In the beginning at that place were not many threats. We were in the centre of the town and the Taliban started from the peripheries...They gradually came to the centre."
Swat had go a centre of interest for international media, but few would speak out. He recalls a talk evidence where not one person would diverge from the Taliban line. "And so the media would come up to our schoolhouse, and Malala with other girls would speak for their education."
Later he was asked if he could discover an older student to write an anonymous blog for the BBC. 1 student agreed, merely the next 24-hour interval her father said that she couldn't exercise it. "Malala was there, and she said, 'why don't I do information technology?'"
'Taliban are horrible'
Eventually he heard that he had personally been threatened on the radio. He finds it hard to cover his ain bravery in retrospect. "It is terrifying, but when yous speak and stand up for your rights information technology is such a powerful thing… you get the strength…You remember, 'if I can achieve it, fifty-fifty at the cost of my life, it's worth information technology'."
It never occurred to him that they would come for Malala. He never believed she was in danger considering at that place is a huge taboo against hurting children in Pakistan. "Only Taliban are horrible. They are terrorists. They don't have any ideals or values."
One day a Taliban gunman boarded a bus looking for Malala by name and he shot her. Two other girls were injured. A bullet was lodged very close to Malala's brain, and she was put into an induced coma. She was brought from Mingora to Peshawar, where she was treated past a British doctor, at present family friend, Dr Fiona Reynolds, and eventually she was brought to Birmingham.
He says it is still difficult for him to talk nearly it. "I forgot how to cry. My world was completely a dark space. I was in a dark space. I couldn't see anything, and I forgot to cry or how to express myself."
When Malala eventually came out of the coma the start affair she did was to inquire where her father was. "She thought I was killed. She had had dreams, different dreams than what happened to her. The blessing to her is that she doesn't remember anything virtually the attack."
Over time she recovered. She has a cochlear implant now because the hearing in her left ear was so desperately damaged, but she went on to continue speaking eloquently about girls' education and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. But you lot know all that.
Lines of poetry
Her father remembers the point he knew it was going to exist okay.
"I had this fear about whether her memory was good or not. [At starting time] she forgot English words and Urdu words. She was best in her female parent natural language...then I used to talk to her in Pashto and say, 'oh Malala because I am a poet and because I like poesy then much, practise you know these words?" and he would utter a few lines of verse.
"One 24-hour interval she said 'yeah, I know it, but I wanted to change it.' The verse said, 'if the men cannot practice, women will come and they will reach.'…I said 'how can yous change it? It's a good affair?' She said 'No. If I next want to express myself in a gathering, I intend to say, 'if the men do or practice not do, we have to accomplish it.' It brought tears to my eyes. I thought, 'Malala the warrior is non wounded or injured. She is live. She is intact'."
The family has lived in Birmingham now for 5½ years "My children have this brummie accent." He attempts it. "They say 'are you okaaaay'." He laughs. "They drag the last syllable. Mondaaay. Sundaaaay."
Why did they stay there?
Information technology was initially so that Malala could go along to receive medical treatment. "But information technology was also and then my children could exist educated in a peaceful environment without whatsoever fear. This is why it's so important when nosotros talk about every child's right to quality, free and prophylactic educational activity.
"Because when education is not safe, when occupied by security forces or there a threat from terrorists, it'south so difficult to study and keep your pedagogy."
Traditional woman
His wife found adjusting to English life most difficult because she had no English and at that place was a lot to arrange to. "Culturally she is a traditional adult female with a scarf, and when she sees on the main street on weekend nights women with less apparel, she says, 'they don't experience any cold! I want to impact their leg with my leg so I don't also'."
He laughs, but so he looks distressing. "She used to cry a lot, talking to the moon. 'This moon is the only mutual affair between Pakistan and the UK'."
He says he also ran into his own internalised paternalism in the early on years in Birmingham when he constitute himself expecting the type of obedience from his sons that he in one case gave to his ain father. With advice from Dr Reynolds, "who is similar a godmother to my sons", he learned to be more relaxed, modelling practiced behaviour rather than demanding deference.
"The worst matter that happens to human beings is thinking 'my motto and philosophy is concluding. We can't change it'."
He likes a lot of things virtually his life in Birmingham, and he is very thankful to the people there. Malala is now studying in Oxford, and he loves watching her living an independent life. He likes to go to friends' houses to talk most politics. And every night he and his wife Toor Pekai go for a walk together. "And we fight considering I walk so fast and she walks so dull."
Merely he misses Swat. "Every night in my dreams I used to go back to Pakistan, and in my dreams each fourth dimension I would tell myself 'this time information technology is non a dream, information technology is a reality' and once more information technology would be a dream...I was so tired of my dreams."
Never happen
Malala was the first to suggest they return for a visit, but he kept trying to dissuade her, saying they should await until things were totally safe. "She said 'if yous think that there will be an ideal time to become dorsum it will never happen'.'"
So they went dorsum in March of this year, and were shortly sitting in a room with 40 women'southward rights activists.
"They were telling Malala, 'y'all are such a huge inspiration to all of united states of america. Your very presence in Islamabad is a huge affair for all of united states of america, and you have raised up our morale sky high because you lot are here in Pakistan'."
He would like the family to return to live at that place some solar day. He thinks it could be of import for the cause of girls' education. That'south still the crusade that motivates him.
The title of his book is Allow her Fly. Someone wrote to him recently and said, "Malala has already flown, why do yous say 'let her wing?'" He laughs. "Permit her fly means allow every girl fly, in every corner of the world. Let every daughter fly."
Back in the Swat Valley in March they landed on the helipad from which Malala was airlifted to Peshawar years before. On that terrible day his wife was continuing on their rooftop watching a helicopter leave with their severely injured girl.
"She removed the scarf from her caput, and spoke to God and said, 'we didn't accept whatsoever security guard, you are our security baby-sit, and you have to protect her and you have to bring my girl dorsum to me as she was.' These were her words to God."
Same helipad
When they returned to the aforementioned helipad all those years later they cried.
"It was a miracle coming back to the same place with this wholeness of family unit. I remember when Malala was in Birmingham and we were in Islamabad, all suddenly my oldest son burst into tears and said, 'we were five at our lunch and our breakfast and now nosotros were iv' and we all cried with him.
"Just that moment when we were all together looking to the outward view of Swat and the mountains…it was like a cute dream."
Permit Her Fly by Ziauddin Yousafzai is out now
Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/malala-yousafzai-s-father-ziauddun-let-all-girls-fly-1.3699029
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