When she was 15 years old, Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban, targeted for saying that young women should have the right to an education. By the time she woke from the ensuing coma, the world had already cast her in the role of fearless activist. Offers for book deals rolled in as she recovered in the hospital. Her face soon was instantly recognizable, featured on magazine covers. She became known mononymously, simply as Malala. In the years that followed, Yousafzai embraced the part, starting the Malala Fund and traveling the globe as an activist speaking truth to power.
Today, she’s ready to reintroduce herself. In her new memoir, “Finding My Way,” Yousafzai reflects on becoming a symbol while still growing up, why she felt her “face and body were now meant for service, not romance,” and how a night of college mischief led to a panic attack that brought back the trauma she thought she had healed from.
In a conversation with the “Modern Love” host Anna Martin, Yousafzai spoke about her search for a normal college experience, her unexpected path to marriage and what it means to continue her activism while allowing herself to live a full life.
Anna Martin: Malala, welcome to “Modern Love.”
Malala Yousafzai: Thank you.
Martin: Congratulations on your new memoir, “Finding My Way.” This is your second memoir. You are now a double memoirist. How did you know the time was right to write this?
Yousafzai: I was reflecting on how I became a young woman. I was known in the public eye as a girl who was shot by the Taliban at age 15, and I was still meeting people who would see me as that girl. I wanted to reintroduce myself beyond those titles, beyond those headlines, and I wanted to show that now I have experienced much more. I had this incredible time at college. I made incredible friends, I had my first love, I am now married, I have been going through other challenges and difficulties. This is all a part of me. And activism is, of course, the mission of my life, but I’m more than that as well.
Martin: Part of the reason I loved this book so much is that you are so immediately recognizable, right? Your name, your face, your work. And I loved how this book — it talked about big things, certainly, but at the same time there were all of these small, ordinary, everyday details about your life that I thought added such dimension. I felt very grateful that you were sharing those things with us.
Yousafzai: I think we see this perfect image of everybody on social media. The way people usually tell their story is that they somehow knew how to figure it all out. But I had to be very honest that I was actually very shy, and I was so scared that I would never be able to make any friends. So in college, I was there because I wanted to study at Oxford, but more than anything, I just wanted to make friends. I did not want to feel alone anymore.
Martin: Before you went to college, when you were a teenager, you had quite a serious life, right? You’re flying to speak with world leaders and be on panels, you’re doing public activism work. What was it like for you to be doing all of this stuff so young and so close to the attack?
Yousafzai: Looking back now, I see how I had accepted the global recognition I was given, and I feel like people were defining me when I was still in a coma. They were calling me brave, courageous, an activist — “speaks truth to power,” all of that. I was like, wow, I’m 15 — I have to start my school again and figure out my life in a new country, the U.K. It was so much to process, yet this is now the mission of my life. Somehow I was forcing myself to accept that.
In school, I had literally no friends. I made one best friend by the end of my school time. I would still talk to my old friends from Pakistan, and have long calls with them, but the rest of my time, I was either with the family at home, or I would be traveling for speeches and conferences. My exposure was very limited. I actually had not seen boys my age — I went to an all girls’ school. It was just this feeling that I was not living the life a child should be living at age 15.
So at college, when I was not being watched by my parents, when I felt I could be myself and there were not these work people after me asking me to do this and that, I thought I had more control over my life. That’s when I was like, OK, I’m going to just hang out, do these crazy things. Somebody wants me to climb the rooftop? I will. Late night parties? I will. I thought college would be just this limited time of my life where I get to do anything I want, and then after that, maybe I’ll just go back to the old, you know, serious life. But I was like, this is that time, the three years where I’m studying at Oxford, when maybe I can be more adventurous.
Martin: There’s a moment in the book that tickled me so much. Right before you go to Oxford, you’re trying to figure out what to pack, what to wear, because your mom had chosen your outfits, right?
Yousafzai: Yes. I love my mom, but she’s a very strict mom. And she was always deciding what I should be wearing. Same for university. She said, let me pack everything for you. So it was, you know, traditional dresses, shalwar kameez, and my mom always got me a size bigger than mine somehow. And it’s just no sense of fashion. None of that for me.
Martin: Much love to Mom, though.
Yousafzai: I know, I know. For me at university, it was about me feeling like every other student. I did not want to stand out. Because, of course, when I wear my shalwar kameez, the traditional Pakistani dress, I do stand out, and people have seen me in the public eye in those outfits. So I wanted to just wear a jumper, trousers, a hoodie, pants. Very, very casual clothes. I wanted to assimilate and be just like any other student. I just wanted to be a normal student. My Google search at the time was “Selena Gomez 2017 casual outfits.”
Martin: So you get to Oxford with a suitcase full of Selena Gomez casual. Who were the people you were drawn to as friends?
Yousafzai: I was exploring the whole university. I was saying hello to almost everybody, because there was no criteria for me. I wanted to meet as many people as I could. There were incredible people in my subject group. Every friend was unique in their own way. And we had a lot in common, but also very different experiences in terms of our background and where we had come from. There was always something to talk about and always something to learn when you were with friends. They made Oxford life more fun for me because this was the time when I was not being asked, “What was it like meeting that president?” “And so what do you do through the Malala Fund?” It was about, “How was your essay last week?” “Wasn’t that question so hard? Did you figure it out?” “This tutor is, like, so annoying.” Or, “Can we skip this lecture, please?” These were the conversations and they were exactly what I wanted. I wanted to be a student. I wanted it to be treated as a friend. And all of these people, the incredible friends I made at Oxford made me feel like I was their friend, and I felt so secure with them. This was the most precious thing from college.
Martin: You are making friends, you’re doing all these totally normal college activities — and yet, you do have a security detail that follows you on campus. Are they quite literally everywhere with you?
Yousafzai: Yeah, they’re following you — they are nonuniform and they want to keep it as normal for you as they can, but there is a point where your friends are like: “We see these strangers behind you every day. Are you OK? Are they following you?” And I’m like: “No, no. They’re just taking care of me. Don’t worry.”
Martin: You also got up to some mischief in college in the dead of night. Tell me about that.
Yousafzai: Yeah, so in college, I found out about rooftop climbing. At Oxford, there is the bell tower, and it’s not easy to get up there. I think it’s not allowed anymore, but if you go up to the top floor of the main hall, in a room there is a small window that you can open and sneak out. There is this narrow roof path — it’s very narrow. It’s basically the edge of the roof that you’re clinging on to. Then you have to jump to this next part of the roof. It is very scary. One misstep and you will fall from the fourth floor of the building. I don’t think you will survive. And you go up to the bell tower and you sit in there, and you can see the bell above you. And it’s just so beautiful. You look down, you could see the whole college. You’re wondering who’s doing what in their room. Some have their lights on, and some might be sleeping. You look at the library — who’s still studying at midnight? You look down, and you are like: “Are these the college security? I hope they’re not looking for me.” I had just told my security that night that I was done with everything, that they could go to bed. So I was looking at their room as well and hoping that they would not suddenly wake up and look for me.
It was a moment where I felt so close to nature, so close to myself. I could hear my heart, and it was just a magical, beautiful moment. There I was sitting, doing something that I should not have been doing, but I was OK to get in trouble. I wanted to try things without feeling like anybody was watching me, anybody was judging me or commenting about me. It sounds too dramatic when I talk about it, but it was truly a moment when I felt that I am living the true college experience.
Martin: It is, to me, a really profound moment of reckoning and introspection for you. You spoke about how you’d accepted this role other people had put you into, and certainly you had also stepped into on your own with your work and your fund. But this is a thing, and I say this with utmost care — it’s a stupid thing to do because it’s so far up. But you’re doing it because you want to.
Yousafzai: And that was my first time, but not my last time. Climbing to the rooftop made me connect to a part of me that I thought had gone missing. I was a very adventurous person growing up in Pakistan. I loved to try new things. When my life took a sharp turn and I started a new life in a new country, I just thought I could never connect back to that old self or I would just never know what I would have been like if none of these things had happened — if I hadn’t been attacked, if I haven’t started this activist life in new place. When I was in college and when I was climbing rooftops, I felt like I was connecting with that old part of me. With time, I have become that person. I try new things. I don’t care if I do it wrong or if I get judged for it or what people think about it. With time, you realize you have to live your life.
Martin: I appreciate that your book doesn’t paint too rosy a picture of college. You had this freedom, you were going to parties, you had these friends and you’re pulling all-nighters, but you also dealt with some quite difficult things. In the book, you so vividly describe the first time you had a panic attack. Can you tell me about that?
Yousafzai: This panic attack was a life-changing moment, because when I was attacked at age 15, I healed from a bullet and I thought the recovery was done. But many years later, when I had the first panic attack, all the trauma, all the flashbacks, it made me feel like everything was coming back as if it had never gone. I felt like I was reliving those moments.
It happened one night that initially felt like a normal night. I was working on my essay, and I had an essay crisis. I was struggling, so this friend called me to the college gardens with some friends. I thought, maybe she might just give me her notes — let’s go and see her. So I go there, we are chatting, and I see this thing for the first time and it’s called “bong.” It’s basically weed, but it’s a different way of inhaling. I had no idea how to take it, what it was or how quickly it affects you, but my friends seemed fine. On the first attempt, I coughed, and then on the second attempt, I inhaled it and it went all in.
I don’t know where time went, but that was the turning point. It felt like a sharp turn where immediately my body froze, I could not understand time or the surroundings anymore, and I thought I was reliving the attack, that I could see the gunman, that I was experiencing that near-death experience where I felt like maybe I am dead, maybe this is afterlife — am I alive or not? I just lost my sense of reality. I had many panic attacks after that. My body would be sweating, I would be shaking, my heart would be throbbing, I could not sleep. As soon as I would try to close my eyes, I felt like it was a nightmare again and I would die.
It was so scary. I thought nobody would understand it. I could not even talk to anybody about it because how would I explain to somebody that I’m experiencing all of this, like an attack happened many years ago, and I was completely normal yesterday? I never thought this would happen. It was so unexpected.
I’m so glad my friends were there for me. They helped me. They did small things like sharing meals with me or doing a sleepover. The sleepover was everything. That was the first time I could actually fall asleep for the first time. They have no idea, but I’ll always remember that. And in the end, it was another friend of mine who told me that I should see a therapist. I was so skeptical.
Martin: Had you seen a therapist before?
Yousafzai: The first time I had seen a therapist briefly was at the hospital in Birmingham when I was recovering from the bullet injury. At the time, I had so many surgeries for physical recovery that I thought: What is this person asking me? How do I feel? Like, come on, look at me — I’m recovering. What have feelings got to do with any of that? I felt that work kept me busy and distracted, and I just had no idea that something like this bong experience could trigger and bring back the trauma and PTSD, all of these things I’d heard of, but I just never understood what they actually mean when you experience them. When I had my first therapy session, it was a crazy experience because I was telling everything to the therapist, and I was hoping that she would give me the medication or whatever cure they have. And soon I realized that that’s not how it works. You have to accept and embrace it, that now this is a part of you. You cannot banish it magically. With time, it can get smaller and smaller, and it will affect you less and less, but you have to be willing to accept and live with it.
Martin: I really appreciate you sharing that. It was terrifying even reading about it, and it strikes me as you’re talking that we spoke about this roof experience as a moment of discovering that your past was still with you, and I’m realizing that this panic attack was almost the shadow side of that, right? That a full embrace of the past is not just the adventures. It’s also the attack.
Yousafzai: Yes, and I think that’s the part, maybe, that frustrated me the most, because you are labeled a brave girl who has overcome an attack and is not afraid of the Taliban, and suddenly you have this moment where you’re witnessing that moment of fear again and you feel the gunmen are right in front of you again, or you feel you have lost your life again. It’s scary, but it’s also embarrassing. I was feeling embarrassed that somehow I had failed in meeting that label of being brave and courageous.
I was in South Africa for this campaign that we’re doing for Afghan women. I was giving the Nelson Mandela Lecture, and we were bringing attention to what’s happening in Afghanistan under the Taliban since they took power four years ago. It is gender apartheid — it is systemic oppression. During that visit, after I gave the speech, I also had a panic attack. All of a sudden, when I went to bed in the middle of the night, I just felt like I could not breathe anymore. My husband was with me — he helped me through the whole night, but I was shaking. I was shivering. So even in moments when I go onstage and give a speech to stand up for women, I say that we are not afraid of the extremists, and then I go back to my room and, that night, I’m shaking, I’m shivering, because I’m having a panic attack — and I don’t understand, because inside me, I know I can continue this fight and I will keep on doing it, but physically and mentally, my body is responding in a way that I have no control of. That doesn’t stop me from doing what I want to do. I will advocate for the rights of Afghan women and girls. We will stand up to all extremists, including the Taliban. We will have a better future for women and girls where they can just choose their own future, but it’s not an easy journey and we have to be honest about it, how it can overwhelm us, and how it can affect our own mental health. So I’m sharing just a part of that in my book.
Martin: It’s powerful, and I appreciate you sharing it with me here. And I think of this word you used — “embarrassing.” Can you tell me more about that word? Because I think I understand, but it’s a harsh word to turn on yourself. Why did it feel embarrassing to have a panic attack?
Yousafzai: It felt embarrassing because I thought I had failed in meeting up the expectation of being brave and strong. When people tell you that you stood up to the Taliban and say: “How did you do that? How could you be so brave?” I did not even have an answer to that. I would just simply say: Education is my right. Why should anyone take it away from me? And now, many years later when I had these panic attacks and I was suddenly scared, it’s not that the Taliban were standing right in front of me, but I felt it. It’s something I wish I could just make disappear. But that is to say that it is still brave when you are embarrassed, when you’re scared, when you are afraid, but you still get up and do what you believe in. I think that is true bravery.
Martin: I want to talk about romance, dating and love, because it’s a beautiful part of your book as well. You mentioned that you weren’t around guys much before you went to college, and then you were. Where was your confidence in terms of dating, boys, romance?
Yousafzai: I was more of a coach at the beginning — when it came to love-life conversations, I was giving advice to my friends. Like, if a guy’s not replying to your texts for three days, he doesn’t want to talk, and I don’t think he deserves you, and my friends were just so shocked that I knew so much about guys and dating. I told them I have never dated a guy. I don’t even know what that is, but I would sometimes just joke with them that I’m more of a coach than a player, and the coach is no more than the players you’re observing.
Martin: You were taking yourself off the field — to continue that metaphor, you’d taken yourself sort of out of the game. Can you describe why?
Yousafzai: There were two reasons for that. One was more my personal decision, and the second one was cultural. When I was attacked by the Taliban, the bullet caused injuries, including hearing loss and also my facial symmetry. I had become very insecure. I thought my smile was never the same and the facial symmetry wasn’t there anymore. I’ve received so many surgeries to work on repairing the facial nerve. Even my last surgery was to do that. I thought the best way is to just say, never date a guy — or, and if I’m honest, I just thought, like, nobody would like me. On the other hand, it was also the cultural pressure, because in our culture in Pakistan, the girls are not allowed to date. It’s different in the cities, but in a lot of the villages, in most of Pakistan, girls are even punished for it. If they’re found dating or texting a guy, there are crazy things like honor killings, and so I thought, OK, that’s supposed to be a bad thing, and why put my family in trouble? Why make my mom and dad angry? Even though I knew we were now in a different country and slightly different culture, that is still there in the back of your mind. So in college, I thought because of these two things, I should just stay away from boys.
Martin: You’re mentioning insecurity, and you share a bit about that in the book, and there is one quote that really struck me. You were talking about grappling with self-image, and you wrote: “My face and body were now meant for service, not romance. You don’t need to be attractive to be an activist, I told myself.” I was struck by that. What does that mean?
Yousafzai: I thought that activism was now the mission of my life, and I did not have to think about looking pretty for that. On the other hand, I thought that to have love in your life, you needed to be looking all perfect and needed facial symmetry. I thought, I can’t have all of that, but at least I can do my activism.
Martin: Did you think you’d ever be in a relationship?
Yousafzai: No. I never thought that, no.
Martin: How did that make you feel, to contemplate a life without a romantic relationship?
Yousafzai: My life changed completely when I was in love with a person. I could not fix my thinking. Before that, I was this strong advocate against marriages. I had told all of my college friends to not get married, or at least I’m not getting married. These boys are just a waste of time. I was so against the institution of marriage in itself. I was questioning it, because growing up, I had seen how girls were forced into marriage or they were married off when they were still children, and that is still a reality for many girls. So I thought: Why would I even consider it? I’m an advocate for girls’ rights. This is the last thing I’ll think about. And here I was in love with a guy, and I knew that culturally for me to be with this guy, I need to be married to him because in our culture, I cannot just live with a guy. My parents will never allow that. It’s hard to explain the cultural part because it becomes a controversy and there’s a lot of backlash if you do not follow the traditions, and the tradition is that you have to marry, and it’s usually your parents agreeing and all of that. You cannot technically be dating or be in love. I was happy that my parents were sort of OK with me seeing the guy, but my mom put so many restrictions. She told me, and this is before Covid, that you have to be six feet apart.
Martin: So she kind of started that trend, it sounds like.
Yousafzai: She started that before we had those germs!
Martin: Tell me about the guy you fell in love with.
Yousafzai: So I met Asser at university. He was visiting a friend who was studying there. And the moment I saw him, I knew that he was my type. He was tall, handsome, with a trimmed beard and wide shoulders. And I thought: Oh, my God — like, I had pictured this guy in my imagination, and somehow I see him in reality. There is this 3-D print of him.
Martin: You are making me jealous, girl.
Yousafzai: Yeah, with a cute smile, and he was just laughing the whole time. And he was funny, and he was cracking jokes and laughing at my jokes. And I was like: Wow, he is the one. But if you ask him, the story that he has starts at a different point, and I’m like: Oh, let’s not even talk about it — can you just simply say, “Yeah, I fell in love with you the moment I saw you”? He’s like, “No, I have to be truthful.” He says, “You have to remember that you were Malala to me.” And sometimes he says this joke that his right shoulder was telling him that if there’s one person in the world that you don’t want to offend or break the heart of, it’s Malala. And then his left shoulder was saying that if you break Malala’s heart, you are going to be her enemy No. 1, and you do not want that life.
Martin: So basically, both angels and devils were telling him, like, “Do not eff this up.”
Yousafzai: When we were still getting to know each other, I took him to see “Toy Story 4,” and I was flirty and all of that. And I was like: Why is this guy so nervous and sort of tight? Why can’t he just relax? And I asked him, and he’s like: “You know, you have security, and they’re standing right behind me? And you want me to be relaxed and all of that?” Later on, I understood — I was like: Oh yeah, poor thing. I never understood it from his perspective.
Martin: How did he make you feel, as you got to know him as a person?
Yousafzai: Whenever I was with him, I felt that I was loved. He made me feel like the present me. You know when you meet people and they have this fixed image of you, and they feel like they know who you are? With him, I felt like I could grow as a person, and when I think about a life partner, this is the person you want, with whom you can grow. You will never be the same person as you are at this moment. He will also not be the person he is at that moment. And when you start your life together, you can grow together. I immediately felt that with Asser.
He is so adventurous — he likes trying new things. He’s funny. Life just looks more fun with him. I was imagining a life with him. I thought: Wow, it just looks so good. So I was very happy that I was technically dating him and that I was seeing him. But at the same time, I was reminding myself that, no, I’m supposed to be an activist, and I can’t get married, and this is all a distraction.
Martin: You were so opposed to marriage as an institution because of what it represented — the patriarchy; you didn’t want to be controlled. How did you reckon with those things?
Yousafzai: I liked Asser, and everything was going well. I was also scared about whether Asser would be the same person as he is now. I had heard so many stories of girls who find out that their husband is not the guy who they thought he would be after they get married. They have these expectations from each other, like the husband is expecting the wife to do chores or change her career path and all of that. I knew about my rights. I’m an activist for girls everywhere — I can fight for myself, but I just did not want it to be a situation where now suddenly I was getting married and I have to fix another guy, I have to fix another problem while I’m advocating for so many other things. I did not want it to be like another journey of activism for me. I thought if marriage makes life easier and happier, then I should consider it.
In the end, we spent some time together at Lake Placid in the U.S. This was the first time when it was just the two of us, and we had the best time together. I had prepared a whole list of questions, because I thought I would ask him everything and figure out who he truly is. I just wanted to know everything about this guy. What is inside his mind? What I see right now is all good, it’s like 10 out of 10, but there’s something mysterious in his mind that I need to know. But I realized that he was this person the whole time that I saw him. It’s like, you keep looking, you keep peeling it off layer after layer, but it’s still the same thing.
Martin: Was there a moment where you realized that he was who he said he was?
Yousafzai: When he is kind to somebody, when he cares about his family members and friends, he shows up, he checks on people. He looks after me. He’s just so nice to me, I can’t tell you. He can listen to me rambling at midnight when he’s so tired and exhausted. He cares about what I eat, and if I’m busy with my work, he makes sure that I have some fun time, so he would arrange sports in the middle of it to say, “You need to relax — you need to take some time off.” My life is sort of still the same, but I feel happier that he’s with me now.
Martin: At this moment, in Lake Placid, you realize that you’re ready to marry. The chapter ends with you saying, “I’m ready to do this.” What was it about that trip that changed your mind? Was it that your mind changed about him, or your mind changed about the institution of marriage, or both, or neither?
Yousafzai: Oh, definitely not about the institution of marriage at all. That is easy to answer. We have to question marriage, we have to make this an open conversation because it is still affecting the lives of tens of millions of girls every year. Even in places where women have more equal rights, even in developed countries, marriage still means more compromises for women. So I think that’s a whole separate conversation, and I don’t have all the answers, but I think it’s important for us to doubt it, to question it.
In Lake Placid, I was sure about getting married to Asser because I knew he was the right guy. He seemed to be this kind, sweet, and the best guy I had ever seen. I had the best time with him. I loved him for sure, but I started loving myself as well. And that’s the difference he made in my life, that I felt that I should love myself and I should be OK accepting that he loves me too. I realized, I don’t have to ask him every question about, so what do you think about — you know, four marriages in Islam, or what do you think about a woman earning more than the man? He was like: “Yeah, if she earns more, that’s fine. I’ll be a happier man.” I was like, “Oh, you just get it right every time!”
Martin: It is so interesting — you try to sort of itemize all of the things that could go wrong, right? It’s very beautiful to me that at the end of this trip, you realize you didn’t have to do that.
Yousafzai: Yes. He was quite surprised. He was like: “So where are the questions? When are you going to ask me?” I was like, you know, I know.
Martin: Because you knew the answer was, what? It’s not even about the answers to those questions. The answer is, he loves you, and I love myself.
Yousafzai: Yes.
Martin: We talked about how your feelings about marriage as an institution haven’t changed. You’re still committed to advocating for women’s independence and the right to decide whether they want to get married. Now you are a wife, right? What does that mean to you?
Yousafzai: You know those words still sound quite heavy — wife and husband.
Martin: Do you use different words?
Yousafzai: Yeah — “bestie.” We don’t call each other husband and wife. It’s when people ask us or when people bring it up, that’s when we say, “Oh, so we are husband and wife, OK.”
Martin: So that word doesn’t feel like it fits so much?
Yousafzai: I have a very stereotypical idea of what “wife” means. I hated the word. Genuinely hated the word. Growing up, I thought: “Ugh, you want to be a wife? Come on.” I just thought that was not a cool thing, to be a wife.
Martin: Do you feel married? I guess that’s really the question I want to ask.
Yousafzai: Yes. It’s about redefining what marriage is. I know that a lot of people already embrace it in this new way, where it means equal partnership between two people, where they respect each other and they love each other and they make life easier for each other. They make life more fun for each other. But where I come from and what I have experienced, seeing things like child marriages and just how women’s futures change completely with marriage, I still have that traditional idea of it and that just causes that trigger for me. Sometimes I think, “Am I giving up to the old systems?” But I know it is different. It is different when you are in a new country — it’s different when you are redefining it. It’s different when the partner actually has good values and has a common understanding of it, and respects you, and he’s like: “Yeah, marriage, whatever. I just want to be with you.” That’s the most important thing for him. So, that changes everything. I’m like: Yeah, sure. Let’s call it marriage. Let’s go to whatever we want to call it. It’s about us sharing this journey of life ahead together.
Martin: I want to turn back to your book. I’m struck that the title, “Finding My Way” — it’s an active title. It’s not “I Found My Way.” It’s “finding,” right? You’re in the process. What do you feel like you’re still figuring out about yourself?
Yousafzai: I actually wanted a title like “Finding My Way” because I do not feel comfortable with books that feel like they have cracked the code and figured it all out. That if you read this book, you have no worries in life anymore. That’s just not the reality. “Finding My Way” is a true reflection of what the journey is actually like, where things are happening for the first time, you may not have even planned them to be a part of your life. You are having these experiences in college like bong, or you are climbing rooftops. That was never part of my plan. Getting ghosted by my crush, that was never a part my plan. Nearly failing my exams, that wasn’t part of my plan. These things happen, you meet the love of your life at a time when you are like: “Wait a second, I’m still in university. I wish I was not thinking about marriage and all of these things right now.” Or, you’re recovering from the bullet of the Taliban and having your last surgery and the Taliban take control of Afghanistan, and you have to think about evacuating the people who you are supporting and at the same time thinking about the future of women and girls, and what does that mean for you? All of these things are about finding your way. You do not have the answer immediately, but it is embracing those moments, accepting the emotions and the feelings you’re going through. You cannot make them disappear. Asking for help when you need to, talking to your friends, family, your colleagues, and knowing that together you will be able to make a way through it. You will find your way through.
Martin: You’re 28 right now. What would you say to 15-year-old Malala?
Yousafzai: Oh, I might give her my book. “Girl, read this book — there is so much ahead of you. Do not get distracted by people around you telling you who you are supposed to be, what media outlet wants to speak to you and how you need to go and give a speech at this conference and that event. Follow your heart. Make friends. Be cheeky sometimes. It’s OK if you don’t know all the answers. It’s OK if you get scared. That’s all fine. You will find your way through it.”
Martin: Malala, thank you so much. What a pleasure to have this conversation.
Yousafzai: Thank you. So nice speaking to you as well.