Let Her Fly

by Ziauddin Yousafzai

  Despite the headaches, Pekai enrolled herself in an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) course. I would do my best to translate for Pekai, and Malala would, too, but we were not always with her. When shopping was needed, we’d try to go together. I realized sadly that her life in the UK, in the beginning, was a complete reversal of the independence she had had in Pakistan. Pekai could not be free in Birmingham in the beginning because of the language barrier, and because of her fear.

  Key to Toor Pekai’s proper education has been her tutor, Janet Culley-Tucker. She met Janet first at the ESOL class, but initially these classes were too much for Pekai. Her headaches were too painful. Still, she remained in touch with Janet, and a few months later, her lessons resumed but in our house instead.

  Janet still comes to the house to teach Pekai, not in a professional capacity but more as a friend. Pekai remains very protective of her time with Janet. Sometimes she takes Janet upstairs to our bedroom, where they can work undisturbed by the noise of the house. It was Janet who first taught Pekai how to read and write the word “education.”

  Janet saw from the beginning that Pekai, like the rest of us Yousafzais, was extremely competitive. She wanted to learn. Slowly, Pekai’s confidence started to return. Now, she often has her books with her, and she will ask anybody who comes to the house if they will help her in conversation. The fierce determination had never really left her. It was just that a new life had challenged it.

  Janet assigned Pekai homework based on the idea of “language experience,” a teaching technique that is built on trying to relate as much of the language as possible to the life of the student. Pekai always completed these assignments to a high standard, but I would see that in her homework Malala was described as “a 17-year-old student” and the information about the boys was limited to their favorite fruits, colors, and hobbies.

  Such descriptions were impressive in how accurate the vocabulary and grammar were, but they were a fraction of what had happened to us, and it made me acutely aware of the difficult journey my wife was on, living in a country in which she could not speak the language. She could not convey to anybody other than us the complex thoughts in her head and the emotions in her heart. Many adult learners in Birmingham are first-generation immigrants who have given birth to their children in the UK. These children are British and yet their mothers are still learning how to read and write their own names and the names of their children in English. Pekai’s determination to succeed was yet another way she made me proud of her.

  In Pakistan there is a brilliant man called Rafiullah Kakar who went to Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. He started a campaign, #WeRejectPatriarchy, aimed at men, encouraging them to write, “My name is…My wife’s name is…” Rafiullah Kakar started the campaign after he celebrated his own partner’s success by revealing her name and Facebook ID. In addition to the comments of support he received, there were messages of criticism and others advising caution about naming his partner. In response to the criticism, he launched the campaign and wrote, “It is a shame that in 21st century we, especially Pashtun and Baloch men, can’t even disclose the names of women of our family let alone empowering them. We are at least 500 years behind the civilised world. What I experienced is the story of every other Pashtun and Baloch male who is trying to change the status quo.”

  It was so moving reading some of the comments that followed this post supporting #WeRejectPatriarchy. My own post, written with great pride, went like this:

  I am Ziauddin Yousafzai. I am a proud husband of Toor Pekai Yousafzai. Toor Pekai is a housewife and a student. #WeRejectPatriarchy.

  Not long ago, Pekai and I were in a supermarket doing some grocery shopping. I was pushing the cart while Pekai was loading the food. When we came to the checkout, I joined a line. I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Pekai.

  “You are in the wrong queue,” she said.

  “Why? I’m here to pay,” I said.

  She shook her head and pointed to the sign that read “Basket.”

  She looked pleased. “You have a trolley, not a basket. You need to be in the trolley queue.”

  It was such a small thing and yet it symbolized so much. I hugged her tightly and said, “Pekai, you make me so happy. I never stop being proud of you.”

  Oh my goodness, Toor Pekai likes to shop. I think I might owe the shops of Birmingham’s Bullring a debt of gratitude for helping Pekai begin to feel more at home in the UK. I will admit that after six years in the UK, I get into such a muddle with what I must wear. If I have to attend meetings or functions, there is often dress advice: smart, smart casual, business suit, formal suit, evening dress. What are all these things? In Pakistan, I wore a simple shalwar kamiz, but here Pekai tells me that my trousers must match my sweater and that on some occasions I must wear smart trousers and a shirt but no tie, but definitely a smart jacket, and then the color and pattern of my shirt must match my trousers. This color matching is impossible, and Pekai is always on hand with an opinion! But truly Pekai loves new clothing dilemmas because they present her with another opportunity to go shopping.

  Toor Pekai has such an extreme love of shopping, mostly of dresses and bags and shoes, that we all love to tease her about it. I believe that Toor Pekai would be happy shopping every day, all day long, going up and down the escalators on the Bullring as happy as a person could ever be. I cannot manage ten minutes of this with her. Sometimes, we seem to go up and down, up and down, and I say, “Oh, Pekai, please! I just need a cup of tea.” Recently, a friend said to me, “But Zia, does Pekai not get tired out after such a long day on her feet?” And I said, “Tired? You must be joking. If Pekai shopped constantly for five days, on the fifth day she would be as fresh as a person who has just taken a shower. She goes shopping to feel fresh. She will never feel worn-out.”

  But, really, I find this trait in Pekai so lovely. She is so generous and enthusiastic about her shopping trips. I think perhaps it is a sign that she belongs here finally and that her English is good enough now. She is as free as she was in the bazaars of Mingora, and like then, she is no happier than when she is shopping for other people whom she feels she can help. It proves to me, too, that you can be perfect companions even if some of your interests are poles apart. I hate shopping—hate it—but I love Toor Pekai.

  Being Malala’s mother has changed Toor Pekai’s life, not only because we no longer live in our homeland. Malala is a global figure, and as a result occasionally Pekai is placed in the limelight, too. She has learned, with time, that rather than allowing these public appearances to present her with the dilemma of how much she should cover her face with her scarf, she can put her position as the mother of Malala to some use. She is happy in front of the camera these days—her scarf always covers her hair but no longer her face—and she will agree to be interviewed by journalists and take part in discussion panels with the help of an interpreter. This would have been unthinkable for her five years ago. As a result, I think that Pekai is becoming very influential among ordinary women in our homeland. These women might now think of Malala as they might once have thought of Benazir Bhutto, a member of the educated elite, even though Malala is not from the elite class. But in Pekai they see a woman with no formal schooling from a village in northern Pakistan who has brought up a daughter to achieve all she dreamed of. When Pekai speaks, these women hear the voice of a woman like them, an ordinary woman speaking for herself, claiming rights for herself and her daughter.

  When Pekai was small, she played a game with her cousins in which they predicted their futures. One of the girls imagined she would be married to a widower, a mother to his children and her own, cooking and cleaning for a big family. The second girl saw a lonely life ahead, but when it came to Pekai, she said, “I dream to be in a town, not here in Shangla, and grills and roti will be brought to me from the bazaar. I’d really enjoy that.”

  To some extent, the girls predicted their own futures. The friend who predicted a big family has many children, the o
ther one is a single mother with a son, and Pekai leads a different kind of life altogether. Back then, she knew she wanted something more than the usual fate of girls in Karshat, but her dreams were limited. I liked so much bringing Pekai ready-made food and kebabs in Mingora because it pleased me that she had not been in the kitchen herself. I still do bring roti and kebabs from the local Pakistani restaurant in Birmingham. This amuses her. But she does not want grills and roti for the next generation. What she wants for girls in Shangla is that they will say: “I want to be an engineer” or “I want to be a doctor” or “I want to run my own social enterprise.” This is the aim and it is possible with education. We know this because Malala is proof.

  Every year, on the anniversary of the attack, Pekai gives Malala a birthday card as a mark of her second life, given to us by God. When Malala was fighting for her life, Pekai prayed so hard outside the hospital that my nephew asked her to lower her voice, but she had confidence in her loud prayer to God.

  Pekai believes that when your heart is full of genuine love for humanity, then this heart full of love and kindness and compassion will please the bigger, higher universal creator—for her, it is God. As a result, God’s heart will be filled with even more love and kindness for you. It is the gracious cycle of goodness. This is the essence of Toor Pekai.

  Recently, we had very bad thunderstorms in Birmingham. Pekai was with Janet working on her English. Janet could see that Pekai was nervous and anxious. “Come on, Pekai,” she said. “We’ll watch a film instead.” She thought the film would be a nice distraction. But Pekai looked horrified. “No film,” she told her. When I returned, Toor Pekai told me what had happened. For Pekai, the thunder meant God was displeased. Watching a film, she thought, would have made God even more cross. “Oh, Pekai,” I said, “you must not worry about displeasing God by watching a film.”

  We laughed about it. But Pekai loves God. She never ever forgets that God gave her back her daughter.

  Daughter

  O faithful daughter of Hadhrat Eve,

  O beautiful creation of the Beautiful Creator,

  go your own way, and make your decisions real,

  for that decision, too, is yours to make.

  Young girl, you were not born only to cook.

  Your youth is not to be ruined.

  You were not born a victim, were not born

  as an instrument for a man’s enjoyment.

  Start your new life, stride along your path,

  and if a sad song is in your heart

  keep in your ear an anthem of liberation.

  If chains enslave you, break them down

  just as they broke down the Berlin Wall.

  We, your true brothers, swear—

  we, your obedient sons, swear

  that no one can attack or insult you;

  no one can dishearten you, or stop you on your way

  because we, too, can be brave enough

  to break the chains that enslave us.

  We, too, will think afresh.

  Ziauddin Yousafzai, from “I Promise,” 1988

  (tr. by Qasim Swati and Tom Payne)

  A Star Rises

  WHEN MALALA WAS BORN, it was very early in the morning. Her birth brought a light to my life like the brightest star rising in the sky. She was a morning star in our lives. I could hear the call for morning prayer in the background as the neighbor who had helped Pekai knocked urgently on my door. I had been sleeping on the sofa of my office in the school that night so that I was separate from Pekai. She gave birth to Malala in small, simple quarters. Men never attended their wives during labor.

  But as that prayer call sounded over the rooftops and Mingora began to wake up, I opened the door to be told, “You have a daughter in your home, a newborn child, a girl child.” And I ran to Pekai and to my daughter and they were lying together in the cot bed. And believe me when I say, I saw the glitter and the shine in my girl child’s eyes. Her eyes were wide-open and bright, not pressed shut, and I saw them shine. Twenty years on, I am still in the aura of that light. I’m still in the happiness of that moment. She was so pure and so refined, her face was so clear, it was as if she had been alive a month rather than having just endured the rigor of birth. I felt I was the most blessed man for having a daughter, a daughter like Malala. I took her in my arms and I could not stop looking at her, this glittering baby. This was the moment, the moment when I looked down at her, into her open eyes, and I knew that this was the start of a journey, her journey and mine, together.

  When I saw her, I felt she was the baby I had been waiting for. It is fair to ask: why should I want to bring a girl into a world, into a patriarchal society, that was not set up to support her? But the answer is simple. When I thought about being a father to a daughter, I imagined my role as completely different from the fathers I had seen around me when I was a son with sisters, when I myself was a boy with no girls in my class. I knew what kind of father I was going to be if I was ever lucky enough to have a daughter. I was completely clear about it. I was going to be a father who believed in equality, and believed in a girl as she grows into a woman, and who raises her so that she believes in herself, so that in her life she can be free as a bird.

  I had helped women before Malala’s birth. I had stood beside my cousin in support of her, and I had spent a lot of time thinking about my sisters, wishing I could do more to improve their lives. But really and truly, the first person in my life with whom I was able to start this journey of equality was Malala. My own real active journey begins with her, because, as I have said, change starts with you. Malala was new and did not need to be shackled to the past. With her birth, I could see the potential of what the world offered with new eyes. My baby became like a touchstone for me.

  I was not worried that my society would cut down this child. As I looked at her, lying in her secondhand cradle, I believed that she could do anything in the world, this beautiful child, and because I had faith in her, that was enough.

  But it is also true that I needed faith in my own position as her father. I had such instinctive, powerful love that I felt as long as I was beside her, supporting her, nothing could stand in her way. I look back and I see myself resolved and determined that these social norms I lived with, these traditions full of misogyny and male chauvinism, would not cut her down. I was her shield.

  I said to myself, “Ziauddin, people will have to yield to you, to support you in this journey, because you will never let them pressure you to fall back into the old ways.” I was strong enough that I believed in the change that had started in my heart. I believed that this change itself was so powerful and important and just and fair and truthful that no power on earth could move me from it. Not only was Malala a girl child but she was also my first living child. I believe that had Malala been my third child or my fourth child after a line of sons, I would still have felt this sense of purpose for her, but there is something unique about a firstborn child, especially because we had lost her sister.

  There is a curious thing that happens in Pakistan. Some women are celebrated by patriarchal men, like the late Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Maryam Nawaz Sharif, daughter of three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif. But these women are of the elite class. These elite women are admired by common people; they are celebrated by highborn men and common men. These men join the political parties of these great women, and they respect them. But their own daughters, lowborn girls living in rooms without servants and placed in secondhand cradles, are not believed in. The men lose faith in their own kin. This is a class struggle in Pakistan as well as a struggle for equality. I ask these men, “If you accept Benazir Bhutto as Benazir Bhutto, why can’t you accept ordinary girls like Lubna, Kalsoom, and Saba? Why can’t you dream for ordinary girls in your own home? You have these great women right beside you, sitting at your fireplace.”

  Both Malala and Toor Pekai are viewed differently now. As I have said, women in our old communities look at Pekai as a role mod
el today, because of the way her status as Malala’s mother has given her the freedom to start speaking in public. Because of Malala’s global profile and her Nobel Peace Prize, they regard us as a different social class, but we are not. I have said to all our family members, “We are from you, we are with you, and we are among you.” One of Pekai’s male cousins said to her, “Toor Pekai, you are amazing. Speak up. Whenever you speak, you are always so brilliant and we are proud of you.” He said this to Pekai but makes no attempt to encourage his own wife to come forward. I have often said to men in my own community, “Why should you only acknowledge and recognize women once they stand before you on a public stage? Why should you not accept all women as human beings like yourself? Why must you wait for a school to be burned and a brave girl to rise up and say, “Why are you burning my school?” And then she becomes Malala of Pakistan? Why should one girl be targeted with a bullet and then she becomes Malala globally? Let a girl like Malala be Malala without this sacrifice!

  Why do ordinary men think their daughters are not good enough to be leaders? It is as if these big powers, big jobs, big titles are just meant first for men and then for empowered rich women. This was not how I saw it for Malala and her future. Because if a parent does not give a child the space to think anything in life is possible, it is an uphill struggle for the child to believe in her own potential.