About and by the girl who shot to fame because she was shot in the head for the sin of wanting education, not only for herself but for all girls, in a culture that is very confused and uncertain between being the open democracy free for all faiths that the nation's creator wished for and the very rigid interpretation of the faith they are told it is the first homeland of - confused and uncertain if it should go with progress and education for all, or lock up half the population for the crime of gender that is decreed to have no soul, convenient for the ruling gender to enslave them for housework and procreation and whatever else the whim of the moment.
So anyone speaking to give privileges to the wrong gender is of course declared unfaithful by the illegal militia that calls themselves students in their language, albeit their studies are limited to memorising and reciting a single book in name of faith, and then killing in name of that so called faith. The person they all thought would be shot was the father, who is a young man by any western standards; or at least one in his prime. The one that got shot, in the head at that and at close range, by the rifle wielding assasins that stopped her school bus and asked for her by name and got on so they could shoot the girls, was the teenage daughter of the man who ran a school for children irrespective of genders.
The family had been in education for a couple of generations, at least, and the father started his own schools when very young and with no money. Malala describes the beautiful valley in Himaalaya in northern part of what was once the state of Kashmir (Pakistan changed the nomenclature for convenience so if UN or any other power decreed Kashmir did after all legitimately belonged to India, a very small portion of the land severed by Pakistan army in name of tribal rebellion need be returned if at all; a tactic employed in Tibet by the occupying nation there, not by chance in all likelihood) and now is fragmented in the part Pakistan swallowed in various pieces, distributed into various states or agencies and so on.
But governance is another story, and the nation is more than confused and worse than one can imagine sitting a few thousand miles away. Democracy of sorts alternates with military dictatorships, political leaders get assassinated for the crime of being popular or possibly winning an election, nation befriends a western nation and is paid more than handsomely for the purpose of serving the interests of the said western nation while the populace is divided between hating west for being of another faith and not locking up women on one hand and looking forward to various benefits of open society and aping fashions on the other, and the military is no different - they formally fight a war with the illegal militia that crosses borders in and out of neighbouring Afghanistan and terrorises populace and murders police and military personnel while in reality the military is infiltrated to who knows what degree by the same illegal militia sympathisers who also secretly or not so secretly hate the west and any other open society where women are not considered without soul.
The young girl is very informative about a variety of details, from books arriving in Pakistan from US for propaganda to create a local militia to fight Russians in Afghanistan while US pays billions in weapons and more, which of course was promptly used elsewhere for terrorism, to the ordinary lives of the people of the region and their thinking and attempting to live in peace - the valley was not very keen to join Pakistan after all, but had to give in, is one small detail - and the descriptions of mountains, rivers, seasons, hardships and small joys is mesmerising.
She speaks of her nation, the wars they fought with India, and the pride in the information given them in school books in her country, about the nation being the first homeland for all who belong to her faith - one supposes some time she will arrive at it being ridiculously false propaganda in that the whole belt from north Africa to west Asia almost up to China is of nations that belong to that faith, that it has been so for over a millennium, and if anything a homeland would be where they all go for pilgrimage and various organisations commit acts of terrorism in name of that particular nation being stepped into by any person of another faith at all. In short this idea of "first nation created as homeland for the faith" merely takes the idea from Palestine question and attempts to push itself squarely in front of it so as to make the nation seem holy rather than a pathetic mistake of a piece cut from its roots and surviving only by various means considered generally not appropriate for a man to resort to for survival, not in most civilised parts of the world.
In school the propaganda is taught in name of nation's studies, including that it was a tragedy to lose a piece of the nation in '71, and of course they have not been told about the half a million Baangalaa women kept locked up naked and chained together by hundreds so they could not drown themselves individually when bathing, and be forced to serve the Pakistan army that terrorised and tortured brethren for the sin of another language, another physicality; so the propaganda is taught in name of studies of the nation, but amazingly the girls is smart enough to overcome that and ask her father while visiting a city far away whether the separation of her new nation from the motherland was a mistake and it would have been better after all not do so.
She thinks of it having visited tombs of Jinnah and his sister, and she mentions how his wife and daughter are not mentioned because the wife was a Parsee (which in languages of the region simply means of Persia, and identifies those that managed to escape being forced to convert when Islam swept that nation, by taking refuge in India; west names them Zorostrian, but in their own society and minds and in the region they are Parsee), and the daughter married someone from her mother's milieu. While visiting Karachi, Malala sees more of her nation and its history, and wonders if the partition was not a mistake.
This is amazing even from someone who is reading Stephen Hawking's famous Brief History of Time at the age of eleven, and is courageous enough to go speak for education for all, not only in small private interviews with various people of west and of her own nation but in public. She fears attacks by the taliban every day as she walks to school and so covers up the books with a shawl that covers her head too, and takes a bus when her mother insists after the explicit threats have been made for both father and daughter. But stop education is out of question, she is a small shoot aspiring to light and air and clings to all possible supports to grow.
Physics, not easier stuff, is her favourite subject.
Tragically they now live in UK, tragic not because it is not a far better and safer life, which it is, but because post the shooting and the escalation of the news, and the fact that Malala survived only due to diligence of medicine including some doctors from UK, she had to be transferred to UK for sake of survival and then her family arrived to be with her for the duration, and so they could live there in dignity they were given a position in the diplomatic core of her nation - but one suspects it was also so the shooting repeated and succeeding might blemish the name of the nation far more, and that the authorities were quite certain that this might happen; taliban would certainly do this and the law and military would be unable to protect them,.so the only solution was to keep them in UK.
Tragic, because not only they miss the beautiful Himaalayan valley but they worked so hard all their lives - father and daughter out in society and in school, and the mother in her own way by supporting so very many with charity that was not even called charity. Their one wish is to return to their homeland, and this they cannot undertake any time soon, not without endangering lives. And the father would no longer risk losing the precious daughter he almost lost. So if he loses all else he worked for and he was, so be it. He does not say so but the daughter comprehends it all the same.
One cannot but help think, but for the accident of birthplace, she might have been safe across the border. Then again, one hopes and prays it remains safe across the border for children to go to school, college, university, research institutions and more. In a sweep of regions in three continents from Algeria and Morrocco to west in Africa to Egypt, Turkey and Arab nations in Mediterranean region to various nations in central and southeastern Asia, there is one nation still holding on to democracy and freedom, not only in politics but in faiths as well, with more faiths than the rest of the world tolerates or has even heard of. It is the largest democracy in the world with one billion population around the turn of the millennium, with more diversity of languages and cuisines and other ways of life and yet united through ancient era by something never understood elsewhere. Hope it stays so.
