meeting malala

Last year, Malala met the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

Taking Malala to see Hamlet on her frst theatre outing might not have been the wisest of choices. At more than three hours, Shakespeare’s longest and most violent play would be a challenge for anyone. For a 15-year-old girl who’d been shot in the head just six months earlier, it was enough to lull her to sleep. Aferward, Malala giggled as she admitted to snoozing through some of it, though she woke for the dramatic sword fght at the end. “It shows us that vengeance gets us nowhere,” she said. “I don’t seek revenge against those who tried to kill me. I just wish I could have talked to them.”

Tat combination of humour, wisdom beyond her years and astonishing lack of bitterness was what captivated me when we frst met on a snowy day in Birmingham, England, to talk about me helping write her memoir. I was welcomed into her highrise apartment by her father, Ziauddin, a remarkable man in his own right, who founded a school despite coming from a village so poor that classes were given on muddy ground under a tree.

Ten the door opened and a diminutive fgure shufed in with a tray of tea and a smile that lit up her face like a lamp. “I am Malala,” she said. She gestured for me to sit on the sofa to her right, her lef eardrum having been shattered in the shooting. She would later have a cochlear implant to restore hearing. “Is it winter here all the time?” she asked laughingly as the windows rattled in the blizzard.

I was instantly smitten with her incredible passion and eloquence. I was privileged to spend the next six months with her and her family, hearing her astonishing tale of standing up to the Taliban, which had taken over their beautiful mountain valley of Swat, once a favourite holiday destination known for its peace.

Malala’s activism started early. She was nine when she saw children salvag-

ing rubbish along her street and begged her father to enrol them at his school. When the Taliban started bombing schools and threatening to stop all girls from attending, she refused to be silenced. It was chilling listening to her describe the feeling of going to class, constantly fearing someone would jump out with a gun. One day, afer an exam, she lef school on the bus and woke up several days later, thousands of miles away in a Birmingham hospital.

Her courage inspired the world. I didn’t realize quite how much until she came to London with her doctor for a day and we took her out. Everyone knew who she was and wanted to take her picture.

Now she lives with her two younger brothers and her parents near Birmingham, in a big house that’s cluttered with awards. She has also captured the hearts of many celebrities, like Bono, Beyoncé and Angelina Jolie, who have reached out with gifs and greetings. Yet she has stayed astonishingly down-to-earth. A lot of that is because of her family. Her brother Atal ofen asks, “But what have you actually done, Malala?” while she and her brother Khushal squabble all the time.

I’ve seen frst-hand how hard it is juggling public life and school. One day I was at her house when she got home from an event in Ireland at 1 a.m., yet she was up at 7 a.m. for school. She always makes sure she does her homework before working on speeches campaigning for the 57 million primary school–aged children deprived of educations.

Back in Swat, she was almost always top of her class. She misses her friends there. Tough she loves her new school, she says the girls treat her as Malala, “the girl who was shot by the Taliban” or “the girls’ rights activist,” and complains, “Tey can’t see the inner Malala.” So she saves her jokes for skyping with old friends, but is making new friends. One recently took her bowling—more fun than Hamlet, I suspect.

Recently, she called to tell me she received an honorary degree at the University of Edinburgh. “So now I have a degree. I don’t need to do all these school exams,” she joked.

Christina Lamb is a foreign correspondent who ghost-wrote I Am Malala (Little, Brown and Company, 2013).

Women’s Work

On March 8, we observe International Women’s Day, when we celebrate the achievements of women around the world and bring awareness to challenges we have yet to overcome. Here are some of our favourite Canadian trailblazers.

1910s

NELLIE MCCLUNG helped women in Manitoba achieve the right to vote and run for public ofce in 1916; the federal government soon followed. She also campaigned to have women legally recognized as persons.

1920s

AGNEs MACphAIL, from rural Ontario, was elected to the House of Commons to represent South-East Grey County in 1921. She was the first female Member of Parliament. 1960s

LAUrA sAbIA insisted on establishing a meeting to discuss the status of women in 1966—then demanded the government take notice. What eventually became the Royal Commission on the Status of Women has helped spur important discussions about equal pay, abortion and violence against women. 1990s

sALLy ArMstroNG, one of the founding editors of Canadian Living and former member of the UN’s International Women’s Commission, has spent more than two decades shining a light on the atrocities faced by oppressed women in conflict zones. 2010s

MALALA yoUsAfzAI stood up for girls’ rights to education. In response, the Taliban shot her while she was heading home from school. She survived and continues to spread the word about education. — Jill Buchner

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