I am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban

Baba
had beautiful handwriting
and my father would spend hours painstakingly drawing letters but 
Baba
never once praised him.
My grandmother kept his spirits up – he was her favourite and she believed great things lay in store
for him. She loved him so much that she would slip him extra meat and the cream off the milk while
she went without. But it wasn’t easy to study as there was no electricity in the village in those days.
He used to read by the light of the oil lamp in the 
hujra
, and one evening he went to sleep and the oil
lamp fell over. Fortunately my grandmother found him before a fire started. It was my grandmother’s
faith in my father that gave him the courage to find his own proud path he could travel along. This is
the path that he would later show me.
Yet she too got angry with him once. Holy men from a spiritual place called Derai Saydan used to
travel the villages in those days begging for flour. One day while his parents were out some of them
came to the house. My father broke the seal on the wooden storage box of maize and filled their
bowls. When my grandparents came home they were furious and beat him.
Pashtuns are famously frugal (though generous with guests), and 
Baba
was particularly careful with
money. If any of his children accidentally spilt their food he would fly into a rage. He was an
extremely disciplined man and could not understand why they were not the same. As a teacher he was
eligible for a discount on his sons’ school fees for sports and joining the Boy Scouts. It was such a
small discount that most teachers did not bother, but he forced my father to apply for the rebate. Of
course my father detested doing this. As he waited outside the headmaster’s office, he broke out into a
sweat, and once inside his stutter was worse than ever. ‘It felt as if my honour was at stake for five
rupees,’ he told me. My grandfather never bought him new books. Instead he would tell his best
students to keep their old books for my father at the end of the year and then he would be sent to their
homes to get them. He felt ashamed but had no choice if he didn’t want to end up illiterate. All his
books were inscribed with other boys’ names, never his own.
‘It’s not that passing books on is a bad practice,’ he says. ‘It’s just I so wanted a new book,
unmarked by another student and bought with my father’s money.’
My father’s dislike of 
Baba’
s frugality has made him a very generous man both materially and in
spirit. He became determined to end the traditional rivalry between him and his cousins. When his
headmaster’s wife fell ill, my father donated blood to help save her. The man was astonished and

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apologised for having tormented him. When my father tells me stories of his childhood, he always
says that though 
Baba
was a difficult man he gave him the most important gift – the gift of education.
He sent my father to the government high school to learn English and receive a modern education
rather than to a madrasa, even though as an imam people criticised him for this. 
Baba
also gave him a
deep love of learning and knowledge as well as a keen awareness of people’s rights, which my father
has passed on to me. In my grandfather’s Friday addresses he would talk about the poor and the
landowners and how true Islam is against feudalism. He also spoke Persian and Arabic and cared
deeply for words. He read the great poems of Saadi, Allama Iqbal and Rumi to my father with such
passion and fire it was as if he was teaching the whole mosque.
My father longed to be eloquent with a voice that boomed out with no stammer, and he knew my
grandfather desperately wanted him to be a doctor, but though he was a very bright student and a
gifted poet, he was poor at maths and science and felt he was a disappointment. That’s why he
decided he would make his father proud by entering the district’s annual public speaking competition.
Everyone thought he was mad. His teachers and friends tried to dissuade him and his father was
reluctant to write the speech for him. But eventually 
Baba
gave him a fine speech, which my father
practised and practised. He committed every word to memory while walking in the hills, reciting it to
the skies and birds as there was no privacy in their home.
There was not much to do in the area where they lived so when the day arrived there was a huge
gathering. Other boys, some known as good speakers, gave their speeches. Finally my father was
called forward. ‘I stood at the lectern,’ he told me, ‘hands shaking and knees knocking, so short I
could barely see over the top and so terrified the faces were a blur. My palms were sweating and my
mouth was as dry as paper.’ He tried desperately not to think about the treacherous consonants lying
ahead of him, just waiting to trip him up and stick in his throat, but when he spoke, the words came
out fluently like beautiful butterflies taking flight. His voice did not boom like his father’s, but his
passion shone through and as he went on he gained confidence.
At the end of the speech there were cheers and applause. Best of all, as he went up to collect the
cup for first prize, he saw his father clapping and enjoying being patted on the back by those standing
around him. ‘It was,’ he says, ‘the first thing I’d done that made him smile.’
After that my father entered every competition in the district. My grandfather wrote his speeches
and he almost always came first, gaining a reputation locally as an impressive speaker. My father had
turned his weakness into strength. For the first time