On Oct. 11, 2013, Malala Yousafzai was in Washington to promote her book, “I am Malala.”
The first news she received in the morning was that she did not get this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. It may have disappointed her, although she said it did not and congratulated the winners. But she had little time to think about it.
Finance ministers and senior officials from around the world were waiting for her at the World Bank. And these were not poets or bleeding heart liberals. They were hardened “financialists,” who usually do not go to functions where teenagers talk about their dreams. But they came to listen to her.
“Did you ever wish to be a boy?” she was asked. To which she responded:
It seems really strange. I never wished to be a boy and I will never wish it. I am proud to be a daughter. I am proud to be a girl.
She also went to a school where the US president and others like him send their kids. There, it is said, President Barack Obama’s daughters waited in a queue to greet her. They might have but it did not impress the Taliban.
“The Taliban will not lose an opportunity to kill Malala Yousafzai and those who were found selling her book will be targeted,” Taliban spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said in Pakistan.
“If I had the chance before I was shot, I would have told the Taliban, ‘you can shoot me, but listen to me first. I want education for your sons and daughters. Now I have spoken, so do whatever you want,’” said Malala.
On Oct. 9, 2012, Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt by Taliban gunmen while returning home in Swat on a school van.
On Oct. 11, 2013, US President Barack Obama signed a proclamation to mark this day as the International Day of the Girl. And after signing the proclamation, the president, the First Lady and one of their daughters welcomed Malala to the Oval Office.
An official White House photo shows President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and their daughter Malia meet with Malala, in the Oval Office on October 11, 2013. –Photo by AFP
On Oct. 12, 2012 a group of 50 Islamic clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwā against those who tried to kill her, but the Taliban reiterated their intent to kill Malala and her father.
On Oct. 11, 2014, Malala was a frontrunner for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. The prize committee gave it and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
“The OPCW is an important organisation working on the ground to help rid the world of chemical weapons. I would like to congratulate them on this much-deserved global recognition,” Malala said.
The book she co-authored with Christina Lamb, which was distributed in the US on Oct. 11, has already earned $3 million for her. And it will bring more as the book already sold thousands of copies on the first day.
I am happy for Malala. I am happy that she is living this magical life that others can only dream of, and she did too when she was living in Swat.
But I am also happy for her because she did not get the Nobel Prize. In losing the award, she won the chance to live a semi-normal life. Obviously, the world’s most famous teenager cannot live like other normal kids. There is a price to pay to be famous and every celebrity has to pay that price.
But a Nobel Prize would have taken away whatever chances she still has to be as normal as possible. And she deserves to live the life of a teenager and do all the things that teenagers do.
Washington Post’s education reporter Valerie Strauss disagrees. She believes Malala could have been a “more electrifying choice for the 2013 prize.”
Yes, it could have electrified millions and that’s why she should not have won it. A teenager does not need to electrify the world all the time. Sometimes, she also needs to play, read, sing, and argue with parents, to go out and enjoy. Being a teenager does not necessarily include traveling across the globe with world leaders.
I met Malala during Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to the United Nations last month when she spoke at a seminar that Sharif also attended. (Please note, Malala’s presence eclipses world leaders too and they are counted among those who attended her meeting.)
We, a group of Pakistani journalists, saw her walking into Sharif’s hotel with her father and former British prime minister, Gordon Brown. We asked her to stop. She did.
I told her that I had recently visited her hometown in Swat. She wanted to talk but Mr Brown intervened. She had signed a contract with her publishers and could not give interviews before her book was published.
We did not want an interview. We just wanted to talk to her but she was not allowed to do so. This obviously is not normal for a teenager.
Her face showed the strain she was confronting. Her doctors had done an excellent job of restoring her face and her jaw, disfigured by Taliban’s bullets. But signs of the damage were still there.
Malala returned to the United States this week but not to meet normal people. She is here on a book tour. Teenagers do not go on book tours.
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