Let Her Fly Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Ziauddin Yousafzai

  Foreword copyright © 2018 by Malala Yousafzai

  Cover design by Mario J. Pulice

  Cover photograph by Antonio Olmos

  Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First Edition: November 2018

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  ISBN 978-0-316-45048-5

  E3-20181005-DA-PC

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Father

  Sons

  Wife and Best Friend

  Daughter

  Epilogue

  Photos

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Newsletters

  To Dr. Col. Muhammad Junaid and

  Dr. Mumtaz Ali, who performed lifesaving surgery on Malala in Pakistan after she was shot. With the grace of God, they saved Malala’s life.

  Foreword

  By Malala Yousafzai

  I WRITE THIS FOREWORD to thank my father.

  For as long as I have known him, my father has been the personification of love, compassion, and humility. He taught me about love, not simply through words, but through his own acts of love and kindness. I never saw my father being disrespectful or unfair to anyone. Everyone was equal to him, whether Muslim or Christian, fair or dark, poor or rich, man or woman. As a school principal, a social activist, an active social worker, he was caring, respectful, and supportive to everyone. Everyone loved him. He became my idol.

  We were not a rich family financially, but we were ethically and morally rich. Aba has the view that for a happy life wealth is neither a factor nor a safeguard. We never ever felt poor, though I precisely remember those times when we did not have enough money for food. If my father made a little money from school profits, he would spend most of it in one day on the family, buying fruit, and would give the rest to my mum, as she was the one sorting out the family’s shopping for furniture, cutlery, etc. Shopping was boring for him, so boring that he would often start arguing with my mum if she took too long. My mum would tell him off and remind him, “You will thank me when you wear this suit.” He loved seeing my brothers, my mum, and me happy and healthy. For him we had what mattered most in our lives: education, respect, and unconditional love, which was enough to make us feel rich and happy.

  His love for me made him my shield from all things bad and evil around me. I grew up to be a happy, confident child, even in a society that was not offering the happiest outlook for my future as a woman. A deep respect for women and girls filled the home I grew up in, even when it was not mirrored in the world beyond our walls. But my father provided me with the shield of love. He was my defense in a society that did not treat me as equal. From the beginning, he stood against everything that threatened my future. Equality was my right, and he made sure that I got it.

  This culture of respect in our home, especially for women, came with Aba’s belief in the value of living life to the fullest and taking the chances that it gives us. I learned from him that I must do the best I can, that I must be the best I can be, and that I should respect people no matter where they come from.

  My father and I have been friends since the very beginning and still are, which becomes rare as girls grow older and a gap starts developing. I used to share almost everything with my dad, more than I would with my mum, from complaining about period pain to asking him to get me period pads. In fact, I was quite scared of my mum, as she was strict. My father would always take my side if I got into an argument with my brothers—which would kind of happen every day!

  I was not any different from the other girls in my class in Pakistan, my friends from my neighborhood, and the other girls of the Swat Valley. But I had the invaluable opportunity of receiving a supportive and encouraging upbringing. It was not that my father would give long lectures or advice to me every day. It was rather that his manners, his dedication to social change, his honesty, his openness, his vision, and his behavior had a big influence on me. I was constantly appreciated by my dad. I was always being told “You are doing so well in your studies, Jani,” “You are speaking so well.” Jani, which means “love” or “soul mate,” is his nickname for me. I was always recognized and encouraged for my little accomplishments, my schoolwork, art, speaking competitions, everything. My dad was always proud of me. He believed in me more than I believed in myself. And this gave me confidence that I could do anything and everything.

  My father is a great listener, and this is one of his qualities that I have always loved. Of course, I am exempting the times when he is busy on his iPad on Twitter. Then you have to call his name, “Aba,” at least ten times for him to respond. Though he says “Yes, Jani,” every time I call him, he is actually not listening while he is on Twitter, and I can tell. When he is listening to people, especially children, he is fully engaged and completely attentive to what they have to say. He was like that with me as well. He always listened to me, to my little stories, my complaints, my worries, and all my plans. My father made me realize that my voice was powerful and that it was important. This is what encouraged me to use my voice and gave me immense confidence. I knew how to tell a story, I knew how to speak up, and when the Taliban came, I felt I had the power to raise my voice to defend my education and my rights.

  Growing up, I began to see how different my parents were when girls around me were either stopped from going to school or were not allowed to go to places where the crowd included men and boys. We lose so many women and girls in this kind of society, where men decide how women should live and what women should do. I have seen incredible girls who were forced to give up their education and their futures. These girls were never given a chance to be themselves. But I was not one of those girls. I would give speeches in places where only boys were speaking, and all around me I’d hear men saying, “These girls should be kept separate!” Some of my own classmates and friends were forbidden by their fathers and brothers from taking part in these school debates between girls and boys. My father was strongly against this mind-set and wanted it to change.

  I remember that my dad would be in the guest room of our house with his friends and elder men visiting him, having a conversation, and I would take tea in for them and sit down and join them. My dad never said, “Malala, you know, we are having an adult conversation here, discussing politics.” He would let me sit and listen, and, more than that, he would let me tell the room my opinion.

  This is important beca
use a girl growing up in an unequal home or society has to fight her fears that her dreams for herself will not come true. For millions of girls, school is a safer place than home. At home, they are told to cook and clean and prepare for marriage. Even for me, with my parents, school represented safety from society’s limitations. When I went to school, my world was my amazing teachers and my amazing principal, and beside me in the classroom were my friends, and we were all talking about learning and our dreams for our futures.

  It is hard to express just how much I loved going to the school that my father started. When I was learning, I could almost feel my brain physically growing bigger and bigger. I knew it was the information that was expanding my mind, all the different things that were filling my head, broadening my horizon.

  The dad who brought me up is still the same today. He is idealistic. In addition to being a schoolteacher, he is also a poet. Sometimes I think he lives in a world of romance, a world of love for people, a world of love for his friends, his family, and for all human beings. I don’t like reading poetry, but I do get this message of love.

  People who want change in our world often give up too early or they don’t even start. They say, “It’s a big issue. What can I do? How can I help?” But my dad always believed in himself, and in his power to bring even the smallest change. He taught me that even if you can help only one person, you should not feel this is a small contribution. Every little bit of help counts in the grand scheme of things. Success, for my dad, is not only about reaching a goal. There is beauty in starting the journey, being on the journey, contributing to and encouraging change.

  My father might not be able to convince the whole world to treat women with respect and equality, which he is still trying to do every day, but he did change my life for the better. He gave me a future, he gave me my voice, and he let me fly!

  Aba, how can I ever thank you?

  Prologue

  SO MANY PEOPLE ask me, with love and kindness in their hearts, “What has been your proudest moment, Ziauddin?” I think, perhaps, they are inviting me to reply, “Of course, it was when Malala received the Nobel Peace Prize!” or “When she spoke to the UN in New York for the first time” or “When she met the queen.”

  Malala is honored and respected around the world, but this question is impossible for me to answer because at its heart it is a question that is not really about Malala my child but about how influential she has been. Is her talking to a queen or a head of state more deserving of my pride than a Peace Prize? This is impossible for me to say.

  What I say to this question instead is, “Malala makes me proud every single day,” and I say that with absolute honesty. My Malala is as much the girl who makes me laugh at the breakfast table with her dry wit, so much sharper than my own, as the girl who for a great deal of her life went to a simple street school in Mingora, Pakistan, and yet proved herself stronger than the Taliban.

  I have never met another child so in love with learning. And while the world might think, “Oh, Malala, she is so clever!” like many students, she sometimes struggles with the workload. As a cold English day fades to an even colder English night—and we Yousafzais, so used to the sun’s rays burning into our skin, feel the English chill through to the marrow of our bones—Malala is often up in her bedroom, a lamp shining down on her textbooks, her brow furrowed. And she is working, studying, always studying, worrying about her grades.

  The blessing of Malala’s life—her “second life,” as her mother, Toor Pekai, has called it since God saved Malala from the attack that she suffered—is not only that Malala has dedicated it to furthering the rights of all girls. It is also that Malala herself gets to live her own dream. Sometimes, for a parent, a moment of true beauty, of luck, of love, of marveling, How can this extraordinary child be mine?! finds its home in the seemingly most inconsequential of things: a look in the eye, a gesture, a beautiful comment, wise and yet innocent. So if I am to be pressed for my proudest moment so far in being Malala’s father I will tell you that it involved Oxford University and the making and taking of a simple cup of tea.

  Since we moved to Britain, Malala had always been very clear that she wanted to read Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at Oxford University. It was a choice that was also made by Benazir Bhutto, our country’s first female prime minister.

  Malala was not new to Oxford University, which of course is famous all over the world. Her public campaign had meant that she had delivered speeches there three or four times since we moved to Birmingham, and each time I had accompanied her. By then, she was old enough to look after herself, and there was no longer any need for me to iron her brightly colored shalwar kamiz and scarves, chosen for her by her mother, or polish her shoes as I had done when we were on the road with the campaign for girls’ education in Pakistan.

  I loved carrying out these so-called chores for Malala and I miss them now that she is fully independent. Why did I love meeting these domestic needs so much? Because in these small acts I felt I was able to express love and support for my child, and for her gender. It was the same sentiment that had propelled me after her birth—my blessed girl child—to include her name, the first female name for three hundred years, on our ancient family tree. It was a way of showing the world, showing myself, not only in words but in actions that girls are equal to boys; they matter, their needs matter; even the smallest ones like having a clean pair of shoes.

  I understand that these small acts of servitude are carried out quite naturally by mothers and fathers all over the world for their children, girls and boys, in many different cultures, but for me, as a middle-aged man from a patriarchal society in Pakistan, it has been a journey.

  I come from a land where women have served me all my life. I come from a family in which my gender made me special. But I did not want to be special for this reason.

  When I was a child, growing up in Shangla, the long hot days were punctuated for us men and boys by refreshments, prepared and served to us for our comfort. They were then cleared away. We did not have to even click our fingers or nod our heads. It was a routine with deep winding roots across hundreds of years of patriarchy, unconscious, unspoken, natural.

  I never once saw my father or my brother approach the stove in our basic family home, built of mud. During my childhood, I never went near the stove, either. Cooking was not for me, or any man. As a child I accepted this truth unchallenged.

  The smell of the cooking curry would always be accompanied by the fast and animated chatter of my mother and my sisters, gossiping as they chopped and diced, instinctively knowing that the juicy bits of the chicken they were preparing, the legs, the breast, would not pass their own lips but would be served to me—their younger brother, a child—to their older brother, and to their father. These accomplished female cooks of my family, hot from the stove and the steam and the slaving, would make do with the bonier parts.

  Their eagerness to serve us, to make us feel comfortable, was also clear in their making of tea, which took an even greater part in the rhythm of our days. In my opinion, the tea we drink in Pakistan is the most delicious in the world. It is hot and sweet and milky, and now that I live in England, I can say that it is nothing like the world-famous English tea, which I will admit I cannot drink.

  Like so many parts of my old world, tea in Pakistan is the product of ritual. First, the pot must be completely clean, with no residue from previous tea-making. Then the tea leaves must be of good quality. The pot is then filled with water, which is boiled up with the tea leaves. When this boiling is fierce, milk is added and then sugar. It is then reheated. At this point, a woman will take a ladle and bring it in and out of the pan, filling the cupped end with liquid, raising it up from the pan and then pouring it down again into the mixture. I still do not understand why this happens, but the women of my house always made tea in this way and our tea was hot and sweet and delicious. There is an even stronger variation, too, doodh pati, where no water is used at all and instead a larger qu
antity of milk is boiled first, with tea leaves and sugar added next, and then reheated until it is like liquid honey.

  We menfolk never made this delicious tea; we simply enjoyed it. One of my earliest memories is as a young boy sitting in our small living room, with my father lounging on a cot bed, propped up with cushions. My mother entered the room carrying a tray, a pot, and two cups. My father did not look up from what he was reading, probably a heavy volume of hadith, a collection of traditions containing sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). She pulled up a table, placed the tray down on it, and poured the hot sweet tea into a cup. She handed it to him and then poured a second for me, her small cherished son, to enjoy. And then she waited.

  She waited to ensure that my father and I had drunk all that we required before taking her own refreshment. Sometimes my father would express gratitude, but not always.

  The quality of tea you are given can be judged in three stages, he told me. First, a man must look at the tea as it is poured down from kettle to cup, observing the texture. Next, he said, observe the color of the tea in the cup. And then finally, he said, the ultimate test is when you take it to your lips.

  For many years, all my father, uncles, and I had to do to enjoy a cup of tea was lift the cup to our lips. If my father found fault with it, he would not have known how to make a cup for himself. My mother or sisters would simply have been asked to go back to the kitchen to make it again. This rarely happened because my mother was an expert at knowing what pleased my father. It was, after all, her role in life to serve him.

  On occasions of public speaking or debate, Malala has never seemed nervous. She rarely gets nervous anywhere, or overcome with emotion like me, except when she is around her teachers. I have seen her address the leaders of the Commonwealth with an almost supernatural calm and yet sitting beside me at the Parents Evening of Edgbaston High School, where she studied for her A levels, there would always be a small, almost imperceptible blush.