The Rebels of The World

Malala Yousafzai { Activist }

Malala Yousafzai was a co-awardee of the Nobel Prize in 2014 for her struggle against the suppression of children And for the right of all children for education. Living in Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunwa province in northwest Pakistan , she had always spoken up for girls' right to education , at the risk of angering the local Taliban , which had at times banned girls from going to school . She was fifteen when she was shot by members of the militant group . In this extract from her autobiography , I am Malala , she recalls the fateful afternoon of the incident.

The day when everything changed was Tuesday , 9 October 2012 . It wasn't the best of the days to start with , as it was middle of school exams , though as a bookish girl I didn't mind them as much as some of my classmates.

That morning we arrived in the narrow mud lane off Haji Baba Road in our usual procession of brightly painted rikshaws , sputtering diesel fumes , each one crammed with five or six girls. Since the time of the Taliban , our school has had no sign and the ornamented brass door in a white wall across from the woodcutter's yard gives no hint of what lies beyond.

For us girls , that doorway was like a magical entrance to our own special world. As we skipped through , we cast off our hear – scarves like winds puffing away clouds to make way for the sun , then ran hurriedly up the steps . At the top of the steps was an open courtyard with doors to all classrooms. We dumped our backpacks in our rooms and gathered for morning assembly under the sky , our backs to the mountains as we stood attention.

The school was founded by My father before I was born and on the wall above us ' KHUSHAL SCHOOL ' was painted proudly in big letters. We went to school six mornings a week and as a fifteen – year old in Year 9 , my classes were spent chanting chemical equations or studying Urdu Grammar ; writing stories in English with morals like Haste makes Waste or drawing diagrams of blood circulation. Most of my classmates wanted to be doctors. It's hard to imagine that anyone would see that as a threat. Yet , Outside the door to the school lay not only noise and craziness of Mingora , The main city of Swat, but also those like the Taliban who thinks girls should not go to school.

That morning had begun like any other , though a little later than usual. It was exam time , so school started at nine instead of eight. It was good for me as I don't like getting up and sleep through the crows of the cocks and the prayer calls of the muessin. First my father would try to rouse me. ' Time to get up , jani mun ', he would say. This means ' soulmate ' in Persian and he always called me that at the start of the day . ' A few more minutes later , Aba Please I'd beg , then burrow deeper under the quilt.

Then my mother would come. ' Pisho ' , she would call. This means cat and is her name for me. At the point I'd realise the time and shout, Bhabhi , I am late! In our culture every man is our brother and every women is your sister. That's how we think of each other. When my father first bought his wife to school, all the teachers referred to her as my ' me brother's wife' or Bhabhi. That's how it stayed from then on. We call her Bhabhi now.

I slept in the long room at front of our house , and the only furniture was a bed and a cabinet. I had bought those with some of the money I had been given as an award for campaigning for peace in our valley and the right for girls to go to school. On some shelves were all the gold coloured plastic cups and trophies I had won for coming first in my class. Only twice I had not come first—both times when I was beaten by my class rival Malka-e-Noor. I was determined it would not happen.

The school was not far from my home and I used to walk, but since the last year I had been going with the other girls in a rikshaw and coming home by bus. It was a journey of just 5 minutes along the stinking steam, past the giant billboard for Dr Humayun Hair Transplant Institute. I liked the bus because I didn't get as sweaty as when I walked , and driver whom we called bhai jan , or brother. He made us all laugh with his crazy stories.