Let Her Fly

by Ziauddin Yousafzai

  All three of the children were educated in my own school, and this meant I saw firsthand their successes and disappointments. But Malala did not usually have many disappointments. She almost always came first or second. She used to take great care with every examination paper, every book. She made a log of everything. All was neat and tidy and nothing was thrown away. She took after my father in that respect.

  But the boys needed more support. Once, in an assembly, I watched tears fill Atal’s eyes and roll down his face when the prize he thought was coming to him went to the boy beside him. He was so distraught in the classroom afterwards that his teacher had to come and find me so that I could console him.

  Although their grades were not as good as Malala’s, I wanted the boys to feel valued for who they were. I did not want them to feel worthless, as I had been made to feel in my schooling, the poor boy with a stammer in a classroom of rich boys favored by the teachers for their birth. But at the same time, I was a head teacher. I loved education. I loved learning. I had gotten my own teachers’ attention by getting good marks. Education had saved me.

  The boys, to be honest, mostly just wanted to play cricket and go up to the roof to fly their kites. They were not interested in schoolwork.

  As a young child, Khushal had some health problems that preoccupied Toor Pekai greatly, and it coincided with a time in which Malala’s strengths were becoming more and more apparent. Atal was happy and sociable from birth, and to this day he remains that same funny, happy, smart boy.

  Khushal, now eighteen, was a complicated boy, and I say this now when my relationship with him is the most loving and happy it has ever been. But it has not always been that way.

  I was always pestering him to read. “Khushal, it is my dream that I come home and I see you reading a book, because you never read any books,” I would say irritably if I saw him watching television or playing on his small computer game, or if I returned home and Toor Pekai told me he had been up on the roof flying his kite for hours without taking anything to drink.

  One afternoon following the end of school—schools in Pakistan end early, a fact that continues to grieve the boys now that they are in UK schools, which finish much later—Toor Pekai came into the room to find him on the sofa surrounded by books, with a book held in his hand. This was an event! “Khushal!” she exclaimed. “You are reading a book?”

  He replied, “No, actually I am not reading. I am fulfilling the dream of my father that I am reading.” When Toor Pekai told me this, I burst into laughter. It was good to hear Khushal’s clever wit at my expense. There is a message here though: the dreams of your parents can be a burden. I, of all people, who had lived with the looming dread of failing to become a doctor, should have known that.

  I spent more time with Khushal and Atal on their schoolwork than I ever had with Malala, but this was because Malala motivated herself. When it came to speeches, learning them, delivering them, I had great success with Atal, who was brilliant in debating competitions and is a born lawyer, but Khushal was not interested in becoming an orator.

  Once, I found out that Khushal was about to win a cup for his academic work. I phoned Toor Pekai, who was in Shangla at the time with the children. “He has won!” We were so happy for his sake. It was not the last time that Khushal would prove to me that he was a child who could motivate himself.

  On his return to school, Khushal collected his cup, but as he walked home a boy snatched it from his hands and ran off down the crowded street. When Khushal fell through the door of our home, he was crying so hard that Toor Pekai could not make out what had happened. The cup was gone. Toor Pekai flew out of our house and ran through the streets looking for the thief. I have no doubt she would have gotten the cup back if she had found him. She had no luck. Khushal was inconsolable.

  When Malala learned of this, she handed Khushal one of her many cups and said she would stick his name on it.

  It was a kind act, but of course Khushal wanted the cup he’d won himself.

  Fathers Who Forget They Were Sons

  The violent Talibanization of the Swat Valley began in 2007, and in late December 2008 the Taliban leader, Maulana Fazlullah, broadcast on Mullah FM, the movement’s radio station, that from January 15, 2009, no girl would be allowed to go to school. Teachers started to fall away in fear.

  The education of my sons was not affected by this decree. But Malala and all the other girl students in my school would have to stay at home, waiting to be married, waiting for a life of serving their husbands, hidden behind a veil.

  How could I bear this as the father of a girl who loved to learn and who had helped build a family in which our very principles of life were freedom and equality? I had filled our family home with crucial values: to be loving, to be kind, to be considerate to other people, to be helpful, to be equal, to be just. And I was now heading back to a way of life as it had been in my own childhood, when my sisters had been forgotten and ignored and I had been celebrated. I had always felt a deep bond with Malala, and the Taliban’s ban on her education only reinforced my resolve. Malala was a girl born in a patriarchal society. I was more focused on Malala than I was on her brothers because they had been born into a society that favored them. From the time of Malala’s birth, I was fighting prejudice against her. By the time Khushal and Atal were born, we could afford the Woma ceremony that Malala had not had. However, I reasoned, “Why should the boys be any different?” So neither of the boys had this important celebration, either. It was the same with the cradle they slept in. If Malala’s secondhand cradle was good enough for her, then each of the boys could have it, too. It was as if the imbalance of our society lurked always in the back of my mind, calling out to be corrected.

  But recently I have thought, “Why did I prevent my sons from having a ceremony? Their births were worth celebrating every bit as much as Malala’s was.” The inequalities we saw around us every day were not their fault. Why must they not be celebrated? Boys have needs, too.

  Perhaps I can allow myself to feel this now because Malala is so successful. I feel that empowering girls must not come at the expense of disempowering boys. Enlightened, confident young boys, loved by their families, taught to value themselves and respect their sisters, their mothers, and their female classmates, grow up to be good men and help bring about change. How Khushal and Atal viewed girls and women while they were children would shape their view of women and girls in their adulthood.

  But the Talibanization of our homeland meant that I was preoccupied with protecting our rights, not analyzing or thinking proactively. It was all about defending what little we already had for the girls.

  The Taliban was such a powerful enemy, and its pronouncements about women and girls’ education were so hateful and devastating for the lives of women and girls, that my need to speak out against them strengthened my bond with Malala. It became our mission.

  We were slowly to become co-campaigners in a way that did not involve the boys. We were all united in this campaign, particularly Toor Pekai, who gave us her blessing and, crucially, supported us with her wisdom and calm, but she was not visible because, culturally, she could not be. Our patriarchal culture together with the effects of Talibanization made women prisoners inside the four walls of their homes.

  The boys were not old enough to really understand what was happening to Mingora. What they did understand, they acted out on the rooftop of our house, playing soldiers with guns trying to shoot each other, the Taliban against the army. To them, it was as harmless a game as the kite flying.

  In the years between 2007 and October 9, 2012, when Malala was attacked, I was so busy campaigning, delivering speeches, and attending councils and meetings, either alone or with Malala, that sometimes I did not focus much on the boys. When the Taliban was not burning our schools or flogging people in the squares or murdering my friends, its members were always in our lives, wandering around, a reminder of what might or could happen to any one of us.

  My sons’ ed
ucation was extremely important to me, but it was not as remarkable for its very existence as Malala’s was. Boys had been acquiring an education in Pakistan for decades. And so it was Malala and I who went on this kind of girl-journey, this girl-odyssey, together. Our campaign to save girls’ education in our country lasted for five years, until she was shot, by which point she was the most influential teenager in Pakistan.

  It was during this period that Khushal took aside one of my close friends, Ahmad Shah, and told him, “My father is not taking care of me like he is taking care of Malala.” It pained me so much when my friend repeated this to me. It was such a big shock because my relationship with Khushal was good. I had taken an interest in his studies and helped him with his reading.

  Every day as a parent you try to be good. It is a kind of investment in the future, because parenthood does go on and on, its effects shaping future generations of your family. It is why family life is so important.

  As a parent, day to day, you can get it wrong when you think you are getting it right. It is moments like Khushal’s complaint to my friend that remind me that parenthood is difficult. I had thought, “I am a fine father for them all.” I could see that as Malala became more famous in our country for her campaign, Khushal might have thought, “Maybe it is my father who is making her famous.” But I told him that really it was Malala who invited that interest in me, and not only in me but in many people in our community. She had a special gift for campaigning and delivering speeches. Malala is unique in her talents—I am not—but then she was a child who needed an adult companion. That made us unique.

  Khushal’s words stung me, and I tried my hardest to redress the imbalance, but I had not the time, in truth, because I was so taken up with my own stand against the Taliban. In this, I failed Khushal in a way that my father never failed me. My father might not have had money, but he gave me his full attention. He made time. I was so preoccupied with what was happening to my country that when we temporarily became internally displaced persons in 2009, when the Pakistani army came to Mingora to clear out the Taliban, I even forgot Malala’s twelfth birthday. We all did.

  In 2011, the year before Malala was attacked, the same year she won Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize and Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Toor Pekai and I made a bad decision about Khushal’s future. At the beginning of 2012, a terrible year because of Taliban death threats, we sent him miles away to attend and board at a very good school, also in Abbottabad. As is so often the case, we thought we were making this decision for his own good. We wanted the best for Khushal and Atal in the same way that we wanted the best for Malala. At least our boys could benefit from a good education in the many schools for boys. In Pakistan, the best schools for boys are often considered to be the cadet schools run by the army. Girls were not able to attend these schools when Malala was growing up, although since 2014, a cadet school for girls has opened in Marden, a sign that change in our country is happening slowly. We decided that in order to prepare Khushal for entry into a cadet school, he must attend a private preparatory school. We chose Abbottabad, hours away from the Swat Valley, because it was more peaceful. From the beginning, Khushal did not want to go, but I compelled him.

  I believed it was my duty to give Khushal what I felt he needed. I was looking out for him. It was an expensive decision—the fees were much more than I had ever spent on Malala’s education—and it was an expensive mistake.

  Malala was doing so well at the Khushal School. She was such a good student, but I felt my son Khushal needed this extra push from a better school. Why did I not listen to Khushal? He hated it from the start. He cried all the time. The teachers hit the boys—not an uncommon thing in schools in Pakistan at that time. It was traumatic for him.

  Every phone call he begged us to collect him, saying that he would run away. “You have put me in a jail,” he shouted down the line. Toor Pekai was often distraught. We all missed him, Toor Pekai especially. I missed him desperately, too, but I clung to this bigger picture I had for him: good school, good college, good job, secure future.

  He must have stayed there for two or three months and then finally during a second visit home he refused to go back. It was a display of the character strength we’d hoped to give all the children.

  “This time I will not do it,” Khushal said. “I’m here.” He meant it.

  I had to yield, even though it had been an expensive initiative. But I did not want him to think of me as a bad father, or feel I had treated him in a bad way. I wanted to be remembered as a responsible, kind, good father.

  It has made me think that when parents’ dreams for their children are against their children’s wishes, when they threaten to take over the happiness of the present, these dreams can infringe on the basic rights of every child. We parents think we know best, that we can decide for the best, but we are not always right.

  Khushal had been so used to the love of us all, to his friends, to his life in Mingora. How could I have thought of uprooting him for the sake of a bright future for him of my own making? My father had done that to me! I should have known better.

  Every father has been a son in his time, but fathers can forget they have been sons. There is a line from Khalil Gibran that I feel sums up what I was only to learn in the fullest and truest extent later. And I learned it the hard way. “Your children are not your children / They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself / They come through you but not from you, /And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”

  Almost immediately on Khushal’s return, Khushal and Atal were back up on the roof together, the kites dancing in the wind. Khushal was never going to leave again, he told us. We never wanted to leave our beautiful Swat Valley, either.

  The morning of October 9, 2012, over our usual breakfast of chapatis, fried egg, and the sugary sweet tea I love, Toor Pekai had ordered Atal to travel home on the school bus with Malala. She was extremely nervous about the safety of all the children, and she would never really relax until they were back home with her. The bus was driven by Usman Bhai Jan, a funny man who would amuse the children with magic tricks and comic stories. Atal, too, was a funny and a cheeky boy, an equal match for Usman. He could also be very badly behaved on this bus ride from the Khushal School to our home. He often refused to sit on the seats inside the bus with the girls, wanting instead to hang dangerously off the back as the bus wound its way through the potholed streets of Mingora. He was only eight and light as a feather. Usman worried, not without reason, that one false move down a deep pothole and Atal’s body would be flung off the back of the bus, causing him great injury or even death.

  That lunchtime, on Pekai’s orders, Atal walked over from the primary school in order to meet up with Malala. I had been in the school that morning, not in Malala’s part, where she was doing some exams, but in Atal’s primary division. By lunchtime, I had left to attend a rally meeting at the Swat Press Club in my capacity as president of the Private Schools Association. Pekai was at home, preparing to leave for an English lesson.

  Usman arrived outside the school with his dyna, or open-backed van, as normal. Malala stood with her friends in their school uniforms, and among the large group of teenage girls in their shalwar kamizes and their school scarves, there was little Atal, weaving in and out, full of mischief and energy. As the girls climbed into the back of the dyna, Atal refused to be seated. “Atal Khan, if you do not sit inside, I will not take you at all,” Usman Bhai Jan told him. Usman remembers this being the one day when he’d had enough of the stress of driving Atal home in such an unsafe manner. But Atal would rather walk home than admit defeat, and after a short standoff in which Atal attempted to argue himself into being allowed to ride on the tailboard, Usman made the decision to drive off without him. As Atal stood and watched the dyna disappear down the Haji Baba Road, its wheels kicking up dirt and dust, he was furious. Atal does not like to lose a fight. I do not like the idea at all that Atal made Usman Bhai Jan’s j
ob of driving the school bus more difficult than it already was. By 2012, it had been three years since the Pakistani army had cleared the Taliban from Mingora, but there were still army soldiers and checkpoints, which the dyna had to pass at least four times a day. But given what was about to happen, I look back now and I think, “Thank God Atal’s naughtiness banned him from the bus that day.” Atal himself says, “Aba, I was lucky I was not on that bus.”

  As Atal began walking home with his friends, Usman drove the dyna along its usual route, up the Haji Baba Road, turning right at the army checkpoint and then continuing along a hilly road, a busy shortcut that Usman thought seemed oddly deserted. On any other day, hanging off the back of the dyna, Atal would have been the first to see the two young men step forward from the side of the road to stop the bus. While the first boy remained at the front trying to distract Usman, the second moved to the back, where Atal would have been. “Who is Malala?” the boy asked everybody sitting inside. When all eyes went involuntarily to my daughter, this boy raised his gun and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit Malala in the head and then hit her two friends, Shazia and Kainat.

  Malala remembers nothing of this attack. All Atal remembers of Pakistan is the happiness of flying his kite, but had Usman allowed him to travel on the tailboard that day, Atal might have been damaged forever by seeing his sister shot at point-blank range. Who is Malala? As the body of my courageous daughter fell forward and her blood hit the seats and floor of the dyna, Atal would have thought, “Malala is my sister and now she is dead.”

  There was to be no more kite flying for the boys ever again. Usman drove the dyna at top speed to Swat Central Hospital. I had turned off my phone to give a speech, but my friend at the Swat Press Club received the call that the Khushal School bus had been hit. I was in a state of confusion. Could Malala have been hurt? Was Atal on the bus that day?