The girl enters the studio stage left, and the crowd goes
wild. She is dressed in traditional Pakistani garb, poised, smiling, and
impossibly mature. The next 16 minutes make you alternately want to cry,
scream, cheer, and laugh. In an interview destined to go
viral, Malala Yousafzai left host Jon Stewart speechless with her
beyond-her-years wisdom and eloquence. In the past few weeks, Malala’s name –
and her cause – have been inescapable, especially after she became the youngest
person ever on the short list for a Nobel Peace Prize. She has met the Queen of
England, taken tea with Angelina Jolie, had a biography published about her
life (at 16, no less), and put a face on the struggle to educate girls,
especially in the developing world.
It is striking that at only 16, Malala has achieved global
celebrity not even Hollywood starlets could dream of, and all without a stint
in rehab. In a documentary about the Taliban in Swat Valley, the viewer is
offered a glimpse of Malala just a few years ago: markedly shier, she hides her
face behind her hands as she cries on camera. The reason for her tears: the
next day, a Taliban ban on girls in school will take effect, and her schooldays
would come to a (brief) end. Her father smiles and pats her back, telling the
cameraman that he simply could not risk his daughter’s life because he “fell in
love with her” the moment she was born. Four years later, Malala says of the
moment, “We don’t learn the importance of anything until it’s snatched from our
hands… Education is power for women, and that is why the terrorists are scared
of education.”
