The Real Malala: Jeans, Crushes, & Healing

Malala defied a ban prohibiting girls from attending school, posting an anonymous blog about the restrictive life for women and children in Pakistan.

It made her a target.

Taliban militants shot her in the head on her school bus.

She was flown to the UK for medical treatment and has lived there ever since.

She has since become the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize winner and a fierce advocate for the rights of girls and women around the world.

I had a historic moment here when I spoke at the UN.

One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world.

Malala Yousafsai taking to Instagram to celebrate completing her degree in philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford.

Malala Yousafsai is working on a new memoir.

It will be her most personal book yet.

This is What Now with Trevonoa.

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Where are you flying from?

How are you?

London.

I'm good.

Like now?

Yeah.

Oh, but you get time back.

I like that.

I don't know if you do.

No, I like when I have extra hours.

Yeah, I feel like I'm time traveling.

I am not

a more, like, I

like just more hours to live i like the days to be longer

i mean that's one way to think of it

i always i just feel like i've cheated in a like a

no it feels really good yeah i feel like i've cheated the system yes i'm like it was such a productive day how did i manage so many things it's like you had like seven extra hours yeah it's exactly that feeling okay so london and then how long are you here for a week okay yeah

and then from here back to london yes but then i go to egypt to visit some of the projects we are supporting for the Gaza refugees, Palestinian refugees.

And then we go to Nigeria for our board meeting.

And then I come back to London, do more press.

Then I go to LA, do more press.

New York, more press.

And then the book is finally out.

And then I start the tour.

Then you start the book tour.

Yeah.

I think you'll enjoy the book tour.

I mean, you've done them before.

Not like a big tour, no.

No.

This is my first proper book tour.

Oh.

Did you enjoy the last one that you did?

The last one, I was still in school.

So you couldn't really like.

So I did two events?

Oh, no, that's not a tour then.

No, no, that's not a tour.

That's definitely not a tour.

You know what I like about the book tour the most is,

look, I don't know how you'll feel about it, but I feel like that's where you reap the reward actually for the first time of the book.

Yeah, I'm excited.

I mean, I haven't experienced it yet.

Like most of, because

my experience was you write the book, you write the book, you write the book.

And then for me, at least it was, what am I doing?

This is taking forever.

This is so hard.

Then the editor comes back with notes, and then you got to do more writing.

Then you're counting what then you're not.

Then you're like, what do you leave out?

What do you put in?

It's just this process, process.

Finally, it's done.

And then it's like, what cover do you want?

What, you know what I mean?

The process, process, process, process.

And then it's only when you're on tour for the first time with the book that you see people like interact with it.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then there's this time before the release when you're doing press.

About the book.

About the book.

So you have, you know, you're like, the book is not out yet, but let me tell you everything about the book.

And I find it really awkward.

I'm like, it's a secret, but you all need to know about it.

But I was so surprised to find you downstairs.

What do you mean?

Because

the first time when we met for the daily show,

you were very late.

Was I?

Yes, I was waiting in my studio.

Sounds like me.

I waited for a very long time.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

No, so I wonder what year you came in.

2019 beginning, maybe.

Can I tell you?

Those were like some of the hardest years of my life.

And one of the things that always would get me at the Daily Show was you're trying to make a show

and you're trying to do it about the news.

And then there were the years when, I mean, now we're back in the years, but it was the years when Donald Trump is now in power, right?

So the way the Daily Show used to work with Jon Stewart was they would watch the news the night before.

Yes.

And then the day of, they would make the show, and then you would put it out.

Yes.

And then when I became the host, when Trump came into power, the news of the night before meant nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

And so sometimes it would be 2 p.m.

after rehearsal.

We're literally done.

And then people would come in and go, everything you wrote is trash.

Everything is wrong.

They've changed this.

This is not happening.

There's a new thing.

Trump spoke on the White House lawn.

There's a new law they put.

And then we'd have to rewrite the show completely.

And so oftentimes it meant whoever was sitting in the back waiting for us.

Were you watching it on like the screen?

Like I'm trying to think of where you were.

In the waiting room.

Oh, yeah, in the way, in the waiting, but we had snacks.

You had snacks,

delicious snacks, delicious.

I tried to make sure there were as many delicious snacks as possible.

Yes, it was a very nice, cozy space.

I enjoyed my time.

Yeah, well, this time I was on the street.

Yeah, but I was surprised to find you here.

I was like, wait a second, he's not just waiting for me in the studio, he's waiting for me on the street to receive you.

You are Malala.

Thank you so much.

This is where you should be in the streets, waiting to receive the people.

There's also not as much money doing a podcast versus the daily show.

Yeah, and with the daily show, there's someone to do that.

I just have to do it myself here.

Understandable.

No, no, no, I like it.

You know what it is?

It's like, it's,

you know what, it's actually a perfect segue into like what you said in the book.

We very seldom get to think about the identities that we've adopted for, you know, or the identities we've inherited because of things that have happened to us.

And so mine in a very different way to yours, people have an idea of me as a person.

So they go, you are like this.

Some people think I'm

very funny.

Some people think I'm like, or only funny even.

Some people think I'm very serious.

Some people think I'm only political.

Some people think I'm stupid.

Some people think I'm whatever.

But I'm all those things.

Do you know what I mean?

And so in many ways,

like the beginning of your book touched me.

And I think it'll touch so many people because

it starts in a place.

that personalizes your story in a way that honestly I didn't expect.

And it's you you lying in a hospital bed, people operating on you because of a gunshot wound.

And in that moment, you've already inherited a story and there's a journey that's been that's been put forth for you.

And so I wonder that, like when I was reading that, I was going, oh, how am I like when I meet Malala?

Am I, do I defer too much?

Should I treat her more normally?

Then I'm like, but I'm not going to roast Malala.

Is that, but do you roast people?

How do you, do you find that people are like, are weird around you, for lack of a better term?

When people meet me, what shocks them most is that I'm funny.

You know, for me, being funny, humor has been a process of healing.

And I do not want to talk about the difficult parts.

And it's not that I feel uncomfortable talking about them.

easily can explain it to people what happened.

And for me, it's just a series of events that I'm telling.

I think it's a blessing for me that I do not remember the incident.

But I do remember when I woke up and how I felt.

I was grateful that I was alive, but I was in a hospital in Birmingham in the UK, not in my country anymore.

And my parents were not there with me for 10 days.

They joined after that.

So I had to figure out what was happening.

Who are these strangers speaking in English?

I had never traveled outside Pakistan.

And I had to just process the fact that, yes, something horrible had happened, but I did not know what exactly.

And yeah, so, you know, this is a story I tell people, I can tell people about how long it took me to recover.

I had to learn to like walk and talk again.

And, and, you know,

and this was truly me.

Like, for me, I thought, this is

this is another life.

I am reborn.

And I felt it.

Like, I couldn't even speak in the beginning.

I couldn't even walk in the beginning.

I felt like I was learning to crawl and to get up.

So at that time, my focus quickly shifted to the

attention that I was now receiving globally because of what had happened.

And I was getting all of these requests: like, we want to write a book about your life.

We want to make a documentary.

You have to give your first speech at the UN.

And that's the turn my life took.

That in all of that, I just forgot who I was actually meant to be before any of this had happened.

Who was the Malala, the funny one, who had a lot of friends, who was back in Pakistan, she was studious, but she was cheeky.

All of that was gone.

And I somehow just thought that, yes, I have lost a lot of things, including joy, including the laughter.

And I never thought I could like make a best friend or, you know, find love and just be like a normal person.

I thought life was now all about activism

so much that I thought it meant sacrificing everything else.

You know, there's something I think of when you say that.

It reminds me of South African activists, you know, the people who fought for apartheid to end.

And I often think about many of the stories that people would tell about the inner, like the inner circles.

Yes.

You know, the Nelson Mandelas, the Walter Cisulus, like whoever they were.

And one of the big things that struck me was I thought to myself, activism, in my opinion, is trying to fight for something so that we can be.

Yeah.

You know, and if you're stuck in the activism, there's no being.

No.

You know, now it's like,

this is all I'm a fighter, I'm fighting, I'm fighting, and we forget the being.

And when you said that, I was like, oh, yeah,

like Malala being mischievous is something that no one ever thinks of.

I remember the first time you roasted me, actually.

I didn't know what was happening.

I don't remember either.

No, no, no.

I remember the first time you roasted me.

I remember my brain short-circuited.

I made what I call the Mandela mistake.

So

Nelson Mandela had been president of South Africa.

Obviously, 1994, he becomes president, right?

And I think this was after his presidency.

He got honored with

a coin that had his face on it.

And this was like the first time, imagine, first black president, first democratically elected president.

But now they're also putting his face on money.

Yes.

And there was a press conference that was being held, and we got invited to this event.

And I distinctly remember a journalist, I think they were from the UK, and they asked him a very serious question.

And I mean, he's like, you know, he's Nelson Mandela, you know, very funny guy, though, privately, people who knew him, and even publicly sometimes.

But the journalist said, Mr.

Mandela, how does it feel to live in a country where you were once considered a terrorist and a person who was persona non grata, and now your face is on that same country's currency?

How does it feel?

And he paused and he goes, he's like, that's how you know you've made it

When you have your own money.

And he's like, no more socializing with poor people.

And I laughed.

Yeah.

And people turned to look because I got the joke.

Maybe it's a South African, like the rhythm I got.

And people looked at me like, shh, hey.

And everyone in the room was just like, mm.

Yes, so, so beautiful.

I was like, that's not an um.

The man made a joke.

He's saying that he's made it now.

So he doesn't have to hang out with the poors which is crazy because nelson mandela would never say that but i realized i did that with you you you roasted me you said a few things and i remember going oh i think this is a very powerful life lesson that malala just shared with me when it was just like no no she's just roasting you like do you do you think people miss you because of that

yeah i think that you know that's how uh

My image has been in the public.

So when I have done interviews, yes, people are quite surprised.

And I make make a very basic joke, and people laugh out loud.

It's like a very basic joke.

Like, you know, with your friend Jon Stewart, I just made a joke about like, you know, Birmingham being as beautiful as New Jersey.

And he just could not stop laughing because I was like, yeah, you know,

but, you know, New Jersey anyway.

Yeah, but I mean, it's because we don't expect it to come from you.

I know.

You're like a saint.

I know, but I like being funny.

I just

think it's the most beautiful thing, you know, that we can laugh together.

I really, I like that for you as well, because it's human.

And the book is very human.

Like the story you're telling is, dare I say, is like Malala being messy.

Yeah.

My words, not yours, my words, not yours.

But like, you know, you know, I was looking through some of the parts that really stuck with me.

And

I was like, it's amazing how this book feels to me.

Like you're on this journey of reclaiming something that we as society never thought that we took from you,

which was the fullness of who you are as a person,

not being one, not being the other.

But it's like people made you hyper-visible, but then also invisible at the same time.

I think that's a very good description of it.

But I don't think it's fully society.

I think you internalize it so much that you think that's who you are supposed to be.

I feel that's what happened to me.

A lot of friends used to like joke that I was

more like Mother Teresa or a Dalai Lama, that I was supposed to live a life like that.

So, when I got this opportunity to be in college, and it's like a normal thing, right?

Just going to university, going to college.

But for me, it was a big deal because, firstly, I was now

not under the surveillance of my parents.

You know, it's a South Asian family,

and I could not even like go to a friend's gathering there because they were just too worried about my safety and just too scared about something happening.

And I could not figure out what that something was going to be.

But I was supposed to be at home and then

spend the rest of my day at school and then be at these events doing conferences and speeches and interviews.

That was how my whole life was: being an activist and then this quiet student in a classroom.

Right.

That when I was in university, I said, okay, the parents are not watching.

Nobody's judging you because nobody technically really knows you.

And

make as many friends as possible.

And I was so glad that I

changed myself a bit.

At school, I was a very quiet person.

I had become a quiet person in the UK because I was like, you know,

I don't know how to fit in.

I'm a latecomer.

I did not make friends on time.

And I just only had one best friend.

So in college, I had one goal to make as many friends as possible.

I was saying hello to everybody.

It sometimes felt awkward, but I said, don't worry about it.

And it changed everything for me because

I made so many friends who

are now friends with me for life.

They have changed my life completely.

I found safety and comfort among them.

It also makes me feel like you you claimed something that you had lost that people didn't necessarily realize.

And I noticed that, you know, when you're telling your story,

I found it beautiful that you went backwards in time to reclaim beauty that I think most people wouldn't have assumed existed in your life.

Yeah.

You know, like when I think of the story of Malala as it was told in the world, it seemed very much like, oh, she's been rescued.

She's been rescued from everything.

Thank goodness, Malala, now you get to live in the West.

What a beautiful life.

Now you have friends.

Now you have a future.

Now you have hope.

You have dreams.

You have beauty.

And yet in the book, you go backwards and you painted pictures that made me go like i need to go to pakistan i need to go see these valleys i need to eat these fruits i need to travel through these places

like what do you think or why do you think that was so important for you to do to to like paint those images as vividly as you did as the beginning as opposed to the beginning that we know so when i joined university i still had not been back to pakistan those memories from my home stayed with me and that's how I felt a connection to home.

Because I felt like there was this big disconnection.

I could not really connect with that old life.

And it was purely these memories, like thinking about my friends, sometimes talking to my old school best friend Muniba, and sometimes just opening Google Maps and zooming in on the street and looking at the rivers and the mountains and thinking about the time I had spent there as a child with friends, giggling, laughing.

And sometimes I would question myself if that was all real.

Wow.

And why have I ended up in a place?

And why can't I go back?

So

it was

around springtime in my first year of university when we were on our Easter break that I told my dad, we have to go back to Pakistan.

I have to go see my friends, see my hometown, see my relatives, because I am not feeling okay.

I feel incomplete.

I think it's affecting me.

And it's, you know, when you feel like this is the last chance that you could see your home or your loved ones.

Yeah, I can imagine.

And it just felt that

I may not get another chance.

It always kept getting delayed.

And I said, there will always be an excuse.

There's always like something happening in the country.

The country is beautiful, but there's always something happening

with politics.

So I said, you know, it will somehow never be the right time, but

we have to go regardless.

And we went there and that was such a fulfilling journey.

It's beautiful.

We met our friends and family, and it was strange.

It was like comforting.

It was all of these feelings were there.

And

I'm so glad that we did it.

I met my school best friend, and

I could just see how the friends connected with me the most because for them, it was all of those childhood memories that were coming back.

You know, how cheeky we were.

They keep a piece of you.

That's what I always think.

Like, you know, I know you were a Twilight fan, but like for me, it was, it was like Harry Potter was really formative.

And I always call my friends my Horcruxes because I feel like your friends keep a piece of you no matter where they are.

Yeah.

And so when you go home, I mean, I experienced this in a very different way, but when I went back to South Africa, you know, like after hosting the daily show,

when I met with people who had always known me, I realized that they contained parts of me that I hadn't been able to fully explore or enjoy or revel in because people in America, not good or bad, they just didn't know that of me.

Yeah.

You know, so now I had people who could be like, oh, naughty trip, you're back.

You, you, you know, that, that thing.

No, suddenly you remember so much about yourself that you had forgotten.

I was like, no way that was me.

Yes, I do remember.

Yeah.

You know, we were running in the field because we stole some plums from the other relatives, you know, farm.

And I was like, wow, like there was once a part of me who was adventurous.

And

there are so many things that they remember for them.

It's still something that happened recently.

It's so vivid in their mind, but you have forgotten things you remember and are not that important to them.

It's like really fascinating.

Did you, did you, how did it feel the first time you had a mango again?

Like a mango from Pakistan?

I asked this.

Yes.

Some people won't know.

They'll be like, this is the most random question ever.

I have a fight with people all over the world and I go,

if you come from a place with mangoes, there's a mango from your country that I argue is the best mango in the world.

Like in South Africa, we have some of them.

And then in Egypt, I've had amazing mangoes.

And I'm trying to think of where else.

Brazil also has.

Brazil also has some nice mangoes.

Mango's not bad in Brazil.

But I was like...

Pakistani mangoes.

Are they that good?

Pakistani mangoes are so good.

They're not there for that long.

The season is very, very short.

It's just a bit of that July, August time.

Yeah.

And so what are they, like the little yellow ones or the?

Big, big, but

like yellow ones.

And they're like so sweet.

I can't even explain you have to try them I'll try

did you go back and like what was the first thing you had that was just I mean it was not the mango season because you can't even preserve those mangoes it's not the same but I had like apples and plums and peaches and apricots and grapes and

like and tea we love chai we love pakistani tea which is

which has so much milk in it and sugar and it's boiled for

forever

they pour like they pour again and again and again?

Boiling and then just pouring it yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah.

I think there's actually a place I went to in London where they do that.

And it was the first time I had it.

It was, it was amazing.

And then you dip your biscuit in it and

then you take a sip of tea.

And that's the best feeling ever.

And people do that on the hottest day of like the summer.

Yeah.

Like it's it's afternoon, it's boiling hot and people like

let's have a cup of tea.

Yeah.

I loved, I genuinely, I loved how you, I don't know, it felt like, and I think a lot of people will feel this when they read the book, is like

you

possess this magical ability to not just weave the tapestry of what you're experiencing, but I feel like you invite the reader to explore their own.

Because as you were longing for home, I found myself longing for home.

And then as you were re-enjoying it, I found myself appreciating the things that I re-enjoyed.

And it's like

it's beautiful and it was also real.

You know, for instance,

there's a story that you share, an anecdote that you share with your younger brother.

And coming from South Africa, I think your story made me realize how strange our stories can be,

but also how normal they are for everybody who's in them.

You know, you tell the story of your younger brother digging a grave.

Yes.

But not in like a morbid way, but like, like how old was he like five at the time, I think?

Yeah, he was very little.

I mean,

and he was just, you know,

digging a grave and

like kids just forgot what it was like to be a child.

Yeah.

And what does it mean for kids to play?

Because they were hearing firing and helicopters and the news of people getting killed.

So for them, it was just normal to be like digging the ground and you ask them what they're doing.

and he replied, digging a grave.

And that's just a reality you accept.

Even the police and thief game, I don't know, it's like different in every culture, but

like robbers, banks, and what do you call it in Pakistan?

Chor police.

Chor police.

Okay.

What is chor?

What does that mean?

Chor is like the thief.

Okay, the thief.

Okay, got it, got it, got it.

And people switched it to like the Taliban and army.

Oh, damn.

So one kid would be the Taliban, the other kid would be then the army, and they would be like chasing each other.

So it does affect kids a lot.

And

we were very young.

I was 11 years old when the Taliban announced ban on girls' education.

And I remember like those days when I felt like I could not have a future.

That's how they had taken away all the rights from women and girls.

And we even would walk to school.

sometimes like in our home clothes, not in our school uniforms.

We would hide our bags under our hefty long scarf so that they could not see it.

And we still continued to go to the school, school, but we tried to hide it in every possible way we could so the Taliban could not see us.

But that's how determined we were.

And, you know, at 11, you just want to be a kid playing in school.

And here we were, like sacrificing and

fighting, like risking our lives for our education.

Our lives just changed completely.

In those moments, It doesn't seem like you thought you were fighting for something much larger than yourself.

You were doing the thing that I sometimes think we forget in society, which was

you were the people that you now fight for.

Exactly.

And

I'm trying to figure out a more articulate way to say it, but I think in crafting your story and sharing it,

you remind us that the people that we're often advocating for, they have agency.

Yeah.

You know, we often make it like, oh, we're giving to charity.

We, oh, the homeless person, do this for.

And it's like, oh, no, no.

You forget that a a lot of the time, the people in these situations,

they are the main character in their story and they have agency.

Yes.

And we were not a non-profit.

We were not an organization.

We were not even some recognized activists.

We were just people there in the community.

And we simply wanted to have our normal lives back.

We wanted to live in peace as we were before and continue our education.

It was as simple as that.

But because of the Taliban, we were now living under terrorism.

But, you know, that I'm so grateful that that is something of the past and it has changed for us.

I

survived.

I became an activist through that.

But when I do this work today,

like I think about the 11-year-old Malala, and I know there are millions like her out there.

They're not just girls who are suffering or who are being left behind.

these are girls who are determined.

They have a voice, they have agency, and they're actually fighting for their rights.

They could be doing it in loud ways, they could be doing it out in the public, or they could just simply be doing it at home when they're picking up their books and their pens and trying to learn.

And I'm seeing that happening in so many parts of the world from Nigeria to

Pakistan to Brazil, all the way to Afghanistan right now.

I was talking talking to four of the Afghan girls who we are supporting through a Malala Fund project, and they are learning through a secret school there because the Taliban have banned girls' education.

And one girl told me that she has converted her home into a school so that she at least feels that she can continue learning at home.

That's beautiful.

So, you know, this is the resilience, the determination of girls.

They do not need any inspirational people.

They already know what needs to be done, what future they deserve.

We just need to listen to them.

Yeah, ironically, they don't need the inspiration.

They just need the support.

Exactly.

Oftentimes, we make the mistake of thinking we're coming in to save the people.

It's like the Superman imagery.

Like even in the most recent Superman, I don't know if you have you seen it?

I saw it.

You saw it.

Yeah.

So, you know, there's that scene where the people are like, Superman, Superman.

And I had like mixed feelings about it because on the one hand, I was like, I mean, I guess they're cheering for Superman, but it made it seem like Superman was their hope.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

And I was like, I don't know.

In real life, it feels like they would just be fighting and the Superman should help.

Yes.

You know?

I know.

I know.

You know, it's just like, oh, suddenly it looks like it's a country in the global south, the Middle East, or, you know.

It was very like, where is this place?

I know.

Very interesting scene.

What is this place?

This border is weird.

Like, all of it was.

Actually,

no, what are you going to say?

No, I was just going to say that it's not about somebody

with superpowers saving us.

I think it's about solidarity, support

that can make a huge difference.

I think it's the local people who can lead change.

And that's the whole model of the work that I'm doing through Malala Fund.

We are supporting local education activists.

So, you know, we do global advocacy for education and I speak and I have created this global platform, but like our investments actually go to local organizations

in Tanzania Ethiopia Pakistan India

I mean Brazil and

sort of I think Afghanistan

and these activists are changing policies they are working on legislations, they are working with local community leaders, they are working directly with girls.

And a lot of these activists are young girls themselves.

So, it's like a phenomenal work.

Like when you visit one project, you just see the impact that these activists are creating.

It's truly phenomenal.

In Tanzania this summer, I went and I saw how one organization, Imsachana Initiative, were addressing the issue of gull safety walking to school because these girls have to walk for like up to 10 miles.

I just could not believe the number.

I double-checked.

I said, are you sure it's 10 miles?

They said, yes.

That's how long girls have to walk.

So they brought in bicycles initiative to help them have a safer and easier and quicker journey to the schools.

And it's, you know, not just addressing the transport issue, but it's giving them safety as well.

It's just incredible work that these activists do.

Like, you cannot fix these problems from DC or London.

Right.

It's about us

further supporting and strengthening the local activism that is happening.

It's through grants, it's through giving them the tools, the technical support, and being there as their allies.

Like, you know, that's all we need.

Because for a lasting sustainable change, we have to strengthen the local communities.

Well, I also think we have to see them as people.

And that's what I love, you know, in what you've done in the book, is like reminding yourself that you're looking at people.

Oftentimes, people think that refugees are refugees because they don't want to be in their country, or refugees are refugees because, you know, their country sucks, or because, and it's like, no, no, no, no, no.

These are people who want to stay there, yeah.

You know, something's pushing them, they have friends, they have rituals, they have ideas, they have like there's like a vibe that you don't want to, there's mangoes, yes, do you know what I mean?

There's the mangoes, and think about your life right now.

Like,

why would you just leave your home?

Yeah,

who wants to pack as much as they can and go and start a life in a new country?

Who wants to walk for days and days, put their lives at risk, and

somehow, you know, be praying that they find safety somewhere.

Like, nobody wants that.

Becoming a refugee is the last resort.

It's the last and the only option that people have who

have to leave their homes because of the challenging circumstances.

I think we have to show more empathy because this could happen to any of us due to any circumstances from climate-related events to conflicts and other dangers.

Thinking, you know, we should think about our neighbors.

If somebody is in a difficult situation, we should open our doors.

And I also shared this story sometimes that when we became displaced in Swat Valley

in Pakistan, it was around 2009, it was not that most people were in these like refugee camps.

A lot of the people were welcomed by

strangers in the neighboring cities.

People just opened their doors.

They just gave their rooms, their homes, their food, everything.

And in our culture, that was like completely normal because hospitality is a part of our culture.

It's part of the Pashtun hospitality.

It's a big part of the Pakistani culture.

So I hope that

we promote these good values everywhere.

Actually, I hope we do, especially because we forget how hard it is to begin a life somewhere else.

Like, you know, there's the story you tell when you're packing your bags to go to university in Birmingham.

and

this whole period of your life,

again,

I would have never thought of you like that.

You're one of the smartest people I've ever met.

You're one of the most thoughtful human beings I know.

You seem to have a broad range of knowledge that just, I mean, it spans everything.

And then I'm reading these stories of you.

having self-doubt and struggling and what was like 41% in English, I think it was.

Yeah, like in every subject, almost.

But you see, like in my head, I go like, no, Malala has always been a high achiever.

And yet here you are stressed about belonging.

And probably the funniest one for me was what you packed in your bag.

Yes.

When you knew you were going to be out of your parents' watch.

It was like jeans.

Even, okay, this is what I mean.

Cardigans.

Yeah.

I never want to wear cardigans again.

But at the time, I was like, I was looking up on Google.

what is trending.

So I searched up Selena Gomez 2017.

Yes.

Casual style.

Yes, let's do it.

Oh, that's amazing.

And I was like, what is Emma Watson wearing these days?

You know, like, what are these cool girls wearing that I want to wear as well?

I had no idea because before that, I had never really worn jeans and just more casual Western style clothing.

Right.

And I was thinking about like, okay, what else is there outside?

Shalvar Kamis.

That's the only dress my mom wants me to wear because for her, I am representing my whole culture.

Yes.

And my relatives are watching me, so we cannot cause any trouble.

And she should not be taking long phone calls because people are just shocked to see me in a different dress.

And so I was like, I need to figure out a way.

So I was still following some rules around like, okay, you know, keep the sleeves long.

And

it's still like, you know, a bit baggy.

But I was like, yeah, I want to

assimilate.

I want to be

among these students and I want to be invisible in some ways that nobody can spot me because my Pakistani clothes are very flashy and bright and colorful and embroidered and all of that.

So my goal was that when I go to college, nobody's shocked like, oh, that's who she is or, oh, this is very similar to the person we have seen on TV.

I wanted to look slightly different as

undercover.

That's what I'm hearing.

Undercover.

TV show.

Malala undercover.

A student.

A student.

Like, imagine when you are in college and somebody's like dressed up nicely.

No, everybody's just

in a hoodie, in a cardigan, in a jumper.

They're you know, they're wearing leggings or w what do you call it in America?

I think I'm using a lot of British.

I think leggings are

leggings.

I don't wear them, but I think it's leggings.

Yeah, I know like the the I sometimes struggle, like trainers, boots.

Oh, yeah, yeah, that thing, yeah, it was just I don't know, some people see it.

People will figure it out.

Yeah, people speak it.

Let them Google it the way you had to Google the fashions.

Be like,

what was Monala wearing?

Because this is the thing, like, people,

I mean, the fact that you had to ask people, like, what fish fingers were.

Yeah.

They are the same thing that we, in South Africa, a fish finger is a, it's, like, a processed type of fish that's then in a.

Okay, okay.

Yeah.

All right.

Do you like fish fingers?

Yes, but, you know, for me, it was like the name.

You know, if you think about it, fish fingers, what?

What did you, okay, what did you think it was?

Because I've actually asked people this question and there's there's one of two.

Some people go, these are the fingers of fish, but fish don't have fingers.

So it's it's referring to a part of the fish that could be a finger, or it's pieces of fish that are shaped like fingers.

Which one did you think when you heard fish fingers?

The former.

The first one.

So you thought it was like a part of a fish?

Yeah.

I was like, there's many species.

Who knows?

You know, there could be a fish out there.

It could be like a fridge of fish.

Hello.

Exactly.

Like, do we know all the fish?

No, we don't.

There's the one with the light bulb.

So, I mean, there could be one with the fingers.

Exactly.

I mean, that makes sense.

Yes.

But then, yeah, eventually my mom also

found out what clothes I had taken

when she

so basically, you know, I went for rowing.

Yeah.

And I wore my jeans and a green bomber jacket.

Yeah, you went for, we got to talk about that.

You went for everything.

But let's, yeah, let's talk about the rowing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then I came back.

I thought it was like a fun day, but I realized I'm never going to do rowing again.

Firstly, because you have to get up at 5 a.m.

Yes.

And secondly, you should know how to swim.

And I couldn't swim.

So I was like, okay, good experience, but it's done.

But that evening, I got a call from my parents saying that,

why were you wearing jeans?

And you have caused so much trouble.

And there's a whole social media backlash.

And I looked at my phone and there was a whole

backlash going on against me wearing jeans.

Who took the picture?

Who was the stranger?

Some stranger.

You know, snitches, man.

But just always.

Like, I was very careful in university in the beginning.

I did not want to go to the clubs and did not want to dance.

I was very careful

because I thought, like, there could be a photo that could be taken out of context and people might create a whole controversy, like a cultural one that, you know, you're not modest enough, you're not Islamic enough, you're not Pashtun or Pakistani enough, whatever identity they want to pick on, and I will cause trouble.

So

I skipped things.

You know, I was

trying to be, you know,

an obedient daughter, but in the end, it was just simply genes that were criticized.

And I was like, if people are criticizing my jeans, I think I'm going to change my approach.

I'm just going to continue wearing jeans.

I am not going to defend it.

And I'm going to move on.

Because I remember my parents were telling me that, so what are we going to do now?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Should we issue a statement?

I was like, statement about what?

Like saying what?

I will never wear jeans again.

Or

I wore them because I said, there's none of that.

It must have been isolating as well.

So here's the thing that's happening in this moment, right?

As I'm thinking of the story, you're in a world where you've left one world where there are norms, and we all have those.

And then you move into another world where there are new norms.

If you hold on to all of those, the previous ones, you'll never fit in.

You'll never belong.

You'll always be isolated.

If you hold on to all of the new ones, then you become isolated and you don't belong in where you're from.

So it's basically this

tug of between

where you were and where you are.

And I was also noticing that in the

trolling or the backlash I was receiving, there were some people who were saying that, why am I wearing a headscarf?

And they were criticizing that I was not fully independent and

because I was still wearing

like all different ways.

So for everybody, it was all about, am I representing my

culture

For some, it was like, well, you have

given up to the patriarchal culture, or you have lost your autonomy, and that's why you're dressing that way.

And I was like, it's none of that.

It's just these things are a part of me.

And sometimes I want to wear something.

Sometimes I don't.

I don't even think about who I'm representing.

I just want to feel comfortable in what I wear.

And who knows, I might change my sense of fashion with time.

But it's just the scrutiny that you face and that you are constantly being watched and criticized.

And

one thing which I told my dad when he was arguing with me was that why is it always about my clothes that is

a topic of discussion?

My brothers immediately switched to jeans and tops.

Not a problem.

No calls from our relatives.

I like how you just drag them into it.

No, your brothers were safe and you were like, what about, that is the classic sibling move.

What about my brothers?

What about my brothers?

It is true.

Also, like, I'm really scared of my mom.

So it's really hard to argue with her because you will never win.

So somehow you have to just come to an agreement where she respects your decision somehow.

But you can never say that I was right.

You can never say that.

But with my dad, I am like a debater.

I argue with him.

So I was like dad have you ever pointed a finger at your two sons and what they were

and he stopped for a second and said yes i think you are right yeah that's amazing yeah he he is um an amazing father an amazing man an amazing husband For for me, of course, like I was so grateful that he was a great father.

And he always tells this story that don't ask me what I did, but ask me what I did not do for my daughter.

And that is, I did not clip her wings.

Amazing father.

But I think

what made a greater

impact, or what made like an even bigger difference on me was how he was treating my mom, how he was a great husband as well.

And that influenced me a lot in

how I had like very high expectations for the person who was going to be my life partner, even though I had a lot of like questions about if I'll find one and do I deserve one and is he the right one.

But the one thing I was sure of was that I need it, that I know how I should be treated because I saw how my dad was treating my mom.

So I think, you know, our dads can also be role models for us for how they can be like good husbands and also like better parents to the sons in the family.

No, definitely.

I agree with that.

I agree.

And how they treat others.

So wait, wait, so what about your brothers?

Do they have like the flip relationship?

Because a lot of the time that'll be the case.

It's like the girls will have an easier time with their dad and then the boys will have an easier time with their mom.

We have a typical family.

Oh, so it is.

It's exactly that.

Three siblings.

I'm the oldest daughter, and then two younger brothers.

The middle one is also following the stereotype.

It's just like such a stereotypical house.

You're so normal, Melana.

So normal.

Oh, no.

All the memes and reels you guys see are like so relevant.

Send them across.

Don't go anywhere because we got more.

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As we move through your life,

I loved how you

it's like you found joy in like the small things, but like really, not in like a saintly way, not in a pious way.

You know, like your dorm, I think it was in Oxford.

Not like I opened a book and I smelled the pages.

No, no, no, no.

Not like that.

Not like that.

Not pretending.

It's more like I closed the book.

It's exactly.

And you're just like, yeah, and I was like, oh, I was smelling what my friends were having.

And I was like, hmm, what's that?

And I was like, oh, what are these new things?

And, you know, what are these people doing?

I want to talk to you about your first friend because

it seems like one of the most important relationships in your life.

And your first friend, I should say, in your new life, because you had your friends from home.

You've got your school friends.

You've got your childhood friends.

But you make this new friend.

who I feel like we are partially, we should all be grateful to her as well because like she

just gave you normal you know which one oh i think it was it cora maybe yeah the first one right yes yes yes yes yeah yeah yes uh so she was my height and uh when i was walking around on the college open day just trying to like figure out who to say hello to i i saw her and i you know, I was giving myself this confidence that don't be shy, say hello.

It's like, hi, I'm Malala.

What's your name?

Hi, I'm Cora.

I'm, you know, I was like, what are you studying?

Studying PP.

He was like, same, I'm also studying PP.

Wait, what is what is PP?

Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

Oh, oh, okay, okay.

Philosophy, politics, and economics.

Okay, PPE.

Got it.

Yes.

I didn't go to university.

I don't know any of these things.

Where do you live?

And why did you decide on this college?

You just start a conversation.

And

so,

you know, we became friends, but

I thought she might ask me about my past and she might have these like, you know, strange questions that I'm oftentimes asked she asked none of that never never in my life all of the friends i made in university they never immediately asked about

my

profile and like you know what they had seen on the news or

um

and there were some people other people who were asking me things like so what was what was it like meeting this person or that person and

what did you say to Obama?

It's like, I did not write the minutes.

What was it like meeting Emma Watson?

They were like, can we meet her?

And I said, like, no, just because I have met somebody once doesn't mean I have their phone number and I can call them right now.

Nobody understands this.

I'm so glad you're saying this right now.

Nobody understands.

They see you meet someone once.

Yes.

They think you're now best friends.

They think you have their phone number.

They think you can like organize something with them.

Have you had it where people ask you to pass something on?

Yes.

Yeah, I've got that.

Can you ask them to record a video message for me?

Yes.

It's my birthday.

Yes,

I will send this to Barack Obama.

I have his number, and I'll ask him to send them.

It's so wild.

But what it feels like they were giving you was it feels like they were allowing you to write your story from scratch in that moment.

Yeah, so the people who became my friends for life

were asking me about my assignment, how I was...

coping with the essay crisis.

Did I need help with the questions?

And

what party was happening that evening,

who was up to what, who was dating who.

And I was quite helpful in giving relationship advice.

So they were bringing up all of their problems to me.

A lot of them were just problems.

And I was like, yeah, this guy is sort of signaling to you very clearly that he does not want to talk to you.

If he is taking three days to reply,

you know.

So you were that friend in the crew.

You were like the relationship expert friend.

Yeah, because at the time I thought, you know, I'm just this observer.

Okay.

I can see from the outside.

I'm like, I'm like the coach.

They were like, how do you know it?

I said, you know, like coaches are never on the field.

You know, they're not the players, but they know what is happening.

You're right.

They're watching the game.

They're watching the game.

Sometimes you have the best perspective because you're watching the game.

Exactly.

So I was fixing all of their problems.

I knew who was putting too much effort and who needed to put a bit more effort and who needed to move on from their schoolboyfriend and

realize that they were changing as a person as well and they could not be stuck in the past.

Oh, that feels a little bit like it cut, like it, it went, you know, like one of the, you know, sometimes you give advice and then it goes close to home.

Yes.

You know, like, were you ever experiencing any of that in giving the advice, realizing there's parts of you that you had from home that you were trying to hold on to that you now had to let go of, but still hold on to the parts of yourself you wanted to keep?

I didn't understand that question.

No, so what I mean is, so you, in this moment, you're giving this advice to your friends.

And what you said was really poignant.

You said, I was,

there's one friend where you noticed that she was holding on to a boyfriend from the past and an idea of herself.

And you're like, hey, now it's time for you to move on.

Yes.

And I wonder if that cut close to home for you, because you were also in a position where you had this older version of yourself.

You're now in the present and you're facing this uncertain future.

Did you also feel like for yourself, you have to figure out what you're willing to let go of and change and move towards.

I think it was a process, and it's still

happening.

There are parts of me that I suddenly realize that I'm letting

go of.

It's really hard.

There are still things that I want to be a part of me forever.

But it's really a process.

I think in college, for me, the most important thing was just being that

jolly student that I once was in Pakistan and to know that this could be my safe space where I feel like nobody's watching me.

Yeah.

And I could be myself.

I don't know what I am.

I don't know what I enjoy and what I love, but I just want to allow myself to experience all of these things because

nobody's watching.

And

that was the best time.

Climbing the rooftops, rooftops, skipping assignments, watching the sunrise in the morning, chatting with friends for hours and hours and hours,

going for grocery shopping,

and

skipping lectures.

I feel like I'm just mentioning all the bad things.

Also, sometimes doing your assignments and sometimes working hard.

The other thing was asking for help when you need help with your academic performance.

Like,

you know it some of us are are hesitant because we feel like are we the only ones who need it but when i found out about the student support

i realized okay you know this might be the only hope for me now because of how i had struggled with my um studies for a very long time in college yeah that when i went there to that room i realized that I wasn't the only one there.

There were like other students

walking out of that study room.

And I was like, oh, like, so I'm not the only one.

And there's like some of my friends who are also getting this support.

So I changed my approach.

I said, okay, I'll always make sure that I ask for help.

Yeah.

But that's, you know, that's like a normal college life, right?

Sort of.

And that's, yeah, but that's, that's, I think that's what makes it so powerful is

we forget how much all of us in life will always

yearn for the thing we don't have, right?

And in a perfect world, everyone will have enough of what they need,

whether it's

good or even friction could be bad.

Just have enough of what you need.

And so I do like that you're talking about the rooftops and the late nights and the talking to the friend because it feels like in this moment in time, that's what you needed.

Yeah, and I knew that I would be in college just for three years.

I did not know what was happening after that.

That I said, this is the only time maybe that I'll have such fun and I could be myself.

And yeah, I was like, all the surveillance cameras are not there.

I'm in my safe space.

And college was, of course, like a really

exciting and fun time, but it was also a difficult time at this because, you know, I had some experiences where

It was the first time that I had a panic attack, like a big panic attack, when I was with some of my friends and was struggling with my assignments.

Uh, so one friend invited me to hang out with them outside in the gardens,

and and I joined them.

It was still late at night, but I said, you know, like this is this is so normal for me, I'll finish my essay by

the morning.

Yeah,

and we were just chatting, and they were trying uh bong.

I had never seen bong, a bong, yeah, like a bong,

Okay.

Exactly that.

Anyway, I was like, oh, what is this?

And they were like, you know, just like related to weed, all of that.

I was like, oh, yeah, like, that's not that serious.

So they were like, you know, you have to try it.

So I took one puff.

I coughed.

It just, I was like, oh, you know, what is this?

Then they were like, no, no, just, you know, try one more time.

I was like, okay.

Tried it again.

And I felt like I inhaled it and suddenly just went inside

and I don't know where time went but this time I like I lost I disconnected from reality

and I felt like

I was just like I thought I was dead again I thought I had been attacked and I thought

even though I don't remember anything about the incident, I thought it was all happening in repeat and time slowed down.

I could not feel my body anymore.

And my friend suddenly realized what was happening, so she held me, and I was holding her hand tight.

She somehow took me to her room.

And I don't know how I survived that night, but I could not sleep because as soon as I would try to close my eyes, I thought this was the end of it.

I would not be able to wake up.

I thought like I was, I was somehow like losing life.

And it

was,

it felt like it was again that whole time of the attack where I was in induced coma and I wanted to get up, but I could not.

I wanted to feel like I was awake.

I needed to know that I was alive and I just could not.

Yeah, but then you know, the next day I knew that my body had changed forever.

I just felt like I could not be the same person anymore.

Yeah.

I became anemic and then I called for a friend and she

helped me.

Then

at the time, I just could not explain to my friends what was happening.

I didn't even know if it was normal or not.

I did not even know if it was a panic attack or not.

Yeah, because it's so jarring.

It was just, I was like, oh, maybe it's just about me because of what I had experienced, that it was

not something that other people have also experienced in their own way.

But I think it was really the friends who helped me in that difficult time,

something like a sleepover.

They just came to my room and they said, you don't have to tell us anything.

We're going to just sleep with you tonight in your room.

They brought their mattresses, yeah.

And,

but then eventually, one other friend of mine, she

said, you need to see a therapist.

That was the first time.

It was months later.

I thought I could.

And wait, this was the first time you had ever gone to a therapist?

Yes.

So in Birmingham, I was receiving all of these medical treatments

from like facial symmetry to like nerve surgery to the hearing implant and all of these things were happening.

And then there was a therapist as well.

And she was the only person in that whole hospital that I did not like.

Oh, wow.

I thought she was asking me too many questions and

I just want to like recover.

I just want to be able to get up.

Why is she asking me about how am I feeling?

I said, what's there to talk about feelings right now

that many years later

i i did not know if therapy would be helpful at all um and then my friend said no like

we all like she said like she goes um to see a therapist she said and i was like but you are she's like that's not the point

um we can talk about different issues you don't know who it's affecting

And then I realized that so many people were actually seeing therapists.

So that was the first time I saw a therapist many, many years later.

And it was because of these panic attacks that I realized I have to go and see a therapist.

Because in the end, I felt like

I just could not do it.

I just could not.

When you share that,

it reminds me of a conversation we actually had on the podcast with a neuroscientist who specializes in trauma.

And she taught us something that I'd never known before, which was

people who have experienced like an acute trauma, part of their PTSD is their cortisol levels change, like the normal, the baseline.

And where most times in society, I think this was discovered around the 1980s with the veterans of the Vietnam War.

It's that people had sort of depleted their cortisol.

And so something could inflame it, something could trigger it, something could bring it back.

And the most important thing she said about the trauma and just how we talk about these things is we often assume people should be willing to share their stories when we are willing to hear them.

But the real thing that unlocks it is them meeting a person at the right time who says the right thing.

Often it's a person who's experienced something similar.

You find you share a different bond, a different connection,

a different way of speaking about it, even that's less sanitized than sometimes like a strict therapist-patient relationship so it's it's it's amazing that that you experienced that on the ground did you find that the therapy helped the therapy helped a lot and i fully agree with you i could not explain it to my parents i could not explain it to anybody else i could talk a bit about it to my friends and i think they recognized that i needed them around me yeah

And then they also realized that maybe you also need to see a therapist.

The therapist was very helpful.

To be honest, in the first session, I thought, I'll like explain everything and just throw everything at them and then they'll tell me what's wrong with me and give me some medication and then I'll call mechanic in you.

Fine, yes.

Exactly.

I was like, fix the problem.

Figure it out and fix the problem.

And she was just nodding.

I kept talking and she was just nodding.

And I was like, where is this going to go?

It is, yeah, the first therapy session is always a strange one.

Yeah, they keep asking you questions and you're like, let me explain it back to you.

But I was like, what's, you know,

and then I had a few more sessions with her.

I would like write down what I was experiencing.

And there were like some good times and I felt normal.

And then there were times when like, you know, my body was sweating and,

you know, I, I could hear my heartbeat and I,

um, I was panicking and like small things could trigger me or, or just like make me somehow feel like

like I had lost.

It's it's really hard to explain these things, you know.

No, I I think I understand.

I think of like when I've had to deal in therapy with, you know, my mom who was shot.

So my mom was shot in the head by my stepfather.

And

even though I wasn't there,

I have images, you know, because my brothers told me the stories.

And my mom, you know, when I got to the hospital and she was being wheeled into ICU, the image that I have of her is still in my head.

And one of the hardest things to try and explain to people is

your mind is like a carousel.

You can't reliably

retrieve the memory the way you want to.

It's spinning.

Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's there.

And then sometimes the light hits it in such a way that it really shines at you in the most harsh way.

And that's when you'll feel a lot of the time what you're not able to feel.

Like what you said in the beginning of our conversation.

Many times we can tell the story.

And sometimes I feel like that's when the carousel is far.

And you just tell it, and then sometimes you feel the story, and it might be triggered by something random.

And

I've learned that's where, like, therapy, especially good therapy, starts to help you bridge those gaps.

You know, you start to bridge the gaps between where you were, what you were feeling, who you are, and what you're feeling, and then merging those two worlds into one.

I hundred percent agree with you because you know, I would not have been able to say anything about it a few years ago.

And,

you know, with the help of therapy and just how my life took a different trajectory, it was not just the incident and the panic attack, but it was many other things, like the decision to marry or not, and what my life would look like after I graduate.

And I graduated in the pandemic.

So it was just a lot of things that were happening that were quite overwhelming.

And then I was also worried about my grades, if I would actually graduate or not, because I had been skipping a lot of those essays and assignments.

So, like, I was by the end of the university time, I was

quite nervous, overwhelmed.

And at the time, I just did not even know if I could ever even share it.

But when I look back and how I have found my way out

and I have learned so much from it, I wanted to write this book.

I wanted to share this story with other people so that it could help somebody out there.

And

it's not just about asking for help, but also being there for people who need help.

Yeah.

And I think it's important for us to reclaim it as well.

Yes.

One of the things I realized in therapy was a lot of the way we think of therapy now is shaped by the West, you know, and they'll go therapist and therapy.

And if you come from South Africa, maybe I'm assuming Pakistan, wherever you're from in the world, a lot of people will say, oh, that's not in my culture.

Oh, we don't do that.

We don't do.

But as I've taken time to learn about different cultures, I've come to realize every single culture, if you look back, you know, either it was erased during colonial times or it's been forgotten.

You know, I remember being in Machu Picchu and learning from historians that they had therapy.

Just not the way we think of it now.

But every culture has elders.

Yes.

And every culture will tell you about which elders were supposed to do what.

And some would even specialize, you know, that there'd be, these are the people you're going to talk to just about being a mother.

and they'll help you to be a mother and they'll help you with postpartum depression, whatever it may be.

These people will tell you about relationships.

This person, and now it's become commercialized, unfortunately, unfortunately, I guess, in some ways.

But there's an element of reclaiming it that I think is very important, you know, because then again, I find people can go, oh, you're westernized now.

Oh, what is this therapy thing you're talking about?

That's not our.

And it's like, no, no, it is our people, actually.

Talking to somebody who can shed perspective and wisdom is exactly part of our cultures.

I do wonder if it's just for people who are in the public eye, who face this pressure that they somehow have to pretend that they're living a perfect life and they are not as open about what they actually feel, what's going on in their mind, that somehow we cannot make a mistake.

We cannot just let

a thought come out or just say something out loud.

Because when I think about the culture in our village in Pakistan,

to me, like everybody's just being themselves.

Yeah, nobody

cares

what you think and how offended you will be.

Everybody will tell you how they feel.

I have noticed that about my mom as well.

She will show it to you, not just say it to you.

Moms do that, yeah.

Yes.

And

my dad, you know, out of respect, he's like very passionate about expressing what he thinks should be done and what he thinks is right.

And I realized that, you know, like it's, it's not the same

for me at least,

that I keep everything to myself.

And I do wonder if this is because I was so exposed to media and this outside world watching me, even when I was 11 years old.

Yeah.

And I was blogging, I was becoming an activist.

I was seen as this kid in school who's giving speeches and she's a bit smart.

So like, I felt like everybody was watching me, even though there was like no camera or nothing.

And that's how I have lived my whole life.

That

sometimes I feel that, you know, that I wish there was just less scrutiny and less surveillance and that we

allowed ourselves to express our opinions or thoughts more openly.

Because as you were saying, like, that's how therapy should technically be, because you say something in front of your friend and your friend is like, or like, you know, it didn't sound right.

Let me explain it to you.

Or like, but have you thought about this thing?

Or I fully agree with you.

It never occurred to me.

Wow, I'm hearing this for the first time.

It could work either ways.

And

I wonder if it's affecting more people out there.

I think it is.

Because of social media, because of how these things work now, that everybody has a TikTok and Instagram.

No, no, I genuinely think it is.

I think it is.

I think it's a combination of two things.

And maybe there's more that I'm missing.

But the more I've thought about it, you know, and to your point, sharing a spotlight,

I've seen every variation of it, you know, people having a spotless image of you, people having a terrible image of you.

I think it's two things that people are experiencing on multiple levels, depending on, you know, how prominent you are.

The one is we have more access to each other than we've ever had in the history of the world.

But at the same time, we have less context than we've ever had for each other in the world.

And I think that's a terrible combination of things.

You know, I think to myself,

one of the natural, beautiful occurrences in the world is how accents and languages evolve.

And I think that's, I speak multiple languages.

I love accents.

The reason I love them is because they tell you a story.

They tell you how people moved.

And it's amazing how you can track an accent that starts in one part of the world.

And if you move far enough and slowly enough, you see that the accent is still exactly the same,

which always blew my mind.

It's like, oh no, an English accent is a Jamaican accent, is an Indian accent.

Like it's depending on which way the journey went, it's just the gradual change that started to soften it and it provides it context.

And I think without context, we lose everything.

Yeah.

Like your friends hold your context.

So a friend can say, that's not you.

Yes.

You know, that's not you at your saddest.

That's not you at your angriest.

That's not you with, you know, whatever it is.

That's not you in your fullest.

And a friend can give you grace a friend can give you compassion a friend can

it's because the person trusts you in your whole and so they notice the anomalies which we all judge you they don't judge you that's the big thing and i love that they're not canceling you yeah no no no but i but i think it's but i think it's because they care for you regardless to be fair to society yes it's because they don't have any context yeah i've literally had people come up to me i wonder if you've had the same experience i've had people come up to me and they've said often at a live event yeah you know one man um i was on the road i was in a place called Springfield, Missouri.

And everyone told me, oh, that's Trump country.

That's all red.

I wonder what it's going to be like.

And I did a show there, had an amazing time, really amazing time.

And after the show, I was in the town and I was walking around.

And this man came up to me and he said, I was sitting like at a little diner at a booth.

And he came up and he's like, hey, can I just let you know, my son brought me to your show.

And I.

I didn't like you.

I didn't like you, but I had a good time at your show and you're a lot different than I thought you were.

Thank you.

And I said, thank you very much.

I said, if I may ask,

why didn't you like me?

He says, well, I saw a few clips of yours on Facebook and I didn't like what I saw.

But, you know, when I came to your show, I was like, wow, you know, I agree with that and I like that.

And maybe I don't think that, but he saw more.

Because I was able to be there with him in person like this.

You know, it's bridging this gap.

I think that's important.

Yeah, I think people on social media are oftentimes talking about a conversation about you.

Yes.

You are never there.

Yeah.

They're like, we think this person said this, and we sure, we are so sure that this person meant this.

Yes.

We're not going to look at the content.

No, no, no.

It's a flattening.

It's a complete, yeah, complete flattening.

That has happened to me a few times.

Yeah.

It's, I mean,

you know,

I think it's changing though, to be honest with you.

So I think I give most of the credits to Gen Z and then, I guess, Alpha

in that, because they grew up in such

surveillance,

to borrow your word, they grew up in a world where they were being watched.

If you look at the difference in their social media versus millennial social, millennial social media was all about the filter and make it look good and make it this and make it perfect.

And then you look at what Gen Z and Alpha did.

They went, no, it's vibes.

I'm going to take a blurry picture.

I'm going to take a messy shot.

I'm going to write whatever I'm feeling.

Then I'll delete it.

You know what?

This isn't my tombstone.

This isn't how I want to be perceived forever.

And even that shift, I think, has brought

just a little more parity or a little more balance i think into the way we see it i think it'll always be there but we're moving you know

if they say that about you you must call me and then i'll i'll fight for you i like fighting people online so oh i love that i really do you know why because i i i also realized at some point

most of it is not real yeah that was the hardest thing yes is most of it is not real most of the hate that people are experiencing of each other is not real yeah and that's why even when i've met um politicians, I'll often say to them, more in the US than anywhere else where I've gotten to meet them, is I go, I wish you would spend more time in public getting along.

Forget the law.

But I wish your constituents knew that you have lunches together.

that you have dinners together, that you go to each other's birthday parties, that you,

because they don't treat each other the way you do.

Yes.

You know?

So true.

And so if you could show them that side of your lives, maybe they would be able to see that side of their lives with each other.

And then not that it would, it doesn't become like utopia, but you know.

Yeah.

In my

interactions with real people, I have like rarely come across

an experience where I felt a person was disrespectful or they

you know, were sounding like a troll like that.

Yeah, yeah.

That how trolls are rarely.

Like it doesn't happen.

So

from the very start, I knew that I cannot assume that what I see on social media is reflective of the world out there.

For whatever reason, I'm like, it could be the same person, but I know they won't treat me the same way if they meet me in person.

So I think, you know, we need to,

I feel like this

connection more in the real world is important, meeting each other, seeing each other, because it makes us feel more human.

And it's not like these fixed objects that we see on social media.

And we have such a fixed opinion about them.

And yeah, the world of social media is crazy.

Just six months before my marriage, I had an interview with British Vogue, which was released because, you know, I was like on the cover and everything.

And the journalist had asked me many questions about what I was thinking I had about life.

And at that time, I had no plans and I was still in COVID time, a recent graduate, figuring out if I wanted to get married or not, because I had like a billion questions about marriage as an institution and all of that.

So, in the interview, somehow I said, Oh, like, why do we have to get married?

Why can't it just be like a partnership and just two people living together?

Why is this like this complicated concept of marriage?

And

when that piece came out, there was this huge backlash that

people eventually were saying that

Malala is against marriage, and then they said nikah.

So, nikah is a religious Islamic ceremony.

Oh, wow.

They made it so specific specific that is advocating against this religious practice which is like so important for you know for for us for for for muslims or pakistanis and like when you look back at the whole interview you you like you don't see it like it's not that i have said that i'm against it i think nobody should be doing that there's none of that but nobody was the people who were making that claim were not going to the article No, no, no, they didn't.

And

you realize that, you know, this is, these are narratives that, you know, one person ignites it, they creates that spark, and then everybody else is like, this is a wonderful opportunity.

We had been looking for it.

Like, let's distribute it, let's share it.

So, this is, there is a bit of that danger with social media because by the time you explain yourself,

it's too late, it's gone.

So, I remember again, like, my mom and dad were disappointed with me.

First, the jeans, and now this.

Now this.

They're like, can you just, and my mom actually said, my mom was like, I wish you had never spoken.

And it broke my heart.

I was really sad, but it also made me angry that why do I have to somehow sound all perfect?

If I repeat my lines, I might clarify it a bit.

Yeah.

But it, you know, like, why, why can't I be a normal 23-year-old who is just confused about marriage?

Why can't I question it?

I can't just pretend like I have figured out everything and I have all the answers.

And if I'm suddenly put on the spot and asked about marriage, of course I'm going to say, marriage?

What?

Who's getting married?

Me?

Why do you have to get married?

That's exactly how I felt.

I thought she caught me red-handed.

Yeah, she like threw a curveball at you.

Yeah,

and

but you know, after that interview was out,

I was still thinking about Asar, who's now my husband.

And I was, you know, like there were many moments in which I realized how he was was the right person and the perfect person for me.

That's beautiful.

Because in that moment, he was so calm.

He actually explained it to my parents why they should not push me to release a statement in defense.

He talked to them.

Wow.

And when we spent some time together, I realized that.

We actually have the best time.

All these questions I have about marriage and, you know, this being an institution historically that has oppressed women and it's patriarchal and, you know, women make more more compromises when they make this decision like how much do they lose on the way in terms of their career and how maternity affects them or like you know is this guy gonna turn out to be a good guy after we get married or

and I spent some time with him and I knew he was the right one but when I

think back

I do not regret it for a second that I had a billion questions about marriage and I took my time and I asked him all those silly questions as much as I could because

this is a reality that women and girls go through.

And I had like everything.

I had a platform, a career, I could make money.

Why was I so scared of it?

I was an advocate for girls' rights.

Like, I knew my rights.

I knew women's rights.

And now, here you were.

And somehow I was scared.

I felt like I was going to lose something.

Wow.

Lose something.

And,

you know, when I got married, I realized, wow, like it feels quite quite normal.

Like, I'm still the same person, nothing has changed.

Or, like, you know, something like, I'm like, I'm watching you, you know, you are my husband, but we're just friends.

I still joke with him.

I'm like, you know, it's just we're husband and wife to the world outside, but we're just friends.

No, just kidding.

No, but I love that friends.

And we are.

We are

best friends.

We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

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So this is what I enjoy is,

you know, you even talk about this and

it's beautiful to read is

the

it's like it's like the nitty-gritty.

It's the non-airbrushed.

It's the human, you know, it's just the human that we all are.

No one, I think

most people wouldn't think of like Malala having a crush.

Most people wouldn't think of Malala being insecure or wondering about what love is or what love isn't.

Like people wouldn't have these things.

I've experienced it like in different ways because everyone paints a picture of you when they paint a picture.

I remember telling someone once, oh, yeah, and I didn't have anyone who would go to prom with me in South Africa.

It was the Matric dance.

People were like, oh, you're lying.

You just say, I was like, oh, you have an image of me in this moment in time.

You weren't with me for any of the insecurities or the journeys that I've been on.

I had a question for you.

Oh, yeah, shoot.

Did you ever speak to Zahira

again?

Like often?

Recently, yeah.

No.

Like, never.

No.

Did it ever feel like you should?

Hmm.

So it's a tough one.

Like, do you know where she is?

No, I don't.

I don't.

I remember when I was towards the end of high school, a friend said that her family had moved to the US and something.

You know,

this is a complicated thing that I love grappling with in life.

Yeah.

Is that there's a difference between the feeling and the reality,

right?

Oftentimes in life, we are chasing the feeling of something.

And because a story has been told to us, we assume that that feeling exists within a reality.

So just to give people perspective, I mean, you know it, but

In high school, I was an absolute proud loser.

I was a nerd.

I spent more time with my computer and my video games than with people.

But I got along and I got, you know, there were people that I've made friends with in school, but I, and I was very lucky that, you know, later on, like Brian became like my best friend.

And I, but I had a very small tight-knit group.

And one of the people who was really nice to me was a girl named Zahira, right?

So Zahira and her friend Joanna, right?

They were really, really nice to me.

And Zahira was one of the most beautiful,

beautiful girls in school.

Like, I read it in your books.

Yeah, I just, I mean, it was true.

She just, but what made her more beautiful was her kindness, her vibe.

She was nice.

She, some people,

male and female, only smiled at the popular kids, you know.

She smiled at everyone.

She, she got along with everyone.

She, it, and, and I remember, and she talked to me, and I remember being like, wow, this is the most amazing thing.

And

I always thought to myself, I would love to ask her to be my girlfriend, which was a crazy, I'd never had a girlfriend.

It was, it was this terrifying thought.

And then, as I say in the book, I never did.

And then one day she just didn't come to school.

Her parents had left the country and that was it.

There's no social media in that way.

And it was, you know,

now the thing that I hold on to is, A, the lesson, as I shared.

It was one of the moments in life where I went, try to avoid regrets.

Yeah.

You know, regret is an unanswered question.

You'll always wonder, what if, what, if, what if.

Rejection is a bruise.

You know, you'll feel it.

I'm not going to lie to anybody.

You'll feel rejection, you know?

There's nothing worse than the unrequited love or the friend that didn't, you know, whatever it is.

But the regret is the what if.

It's the infinite what if.

So that's the first thing.

The second thing I hold on to is the idea.

And that is,

like, why would I contact the person?

I would contact them because I have an idea in my head that that person holds this piece of a happiness that maybe I will attain if I find them again, etc.

Yes.

But I then realize, even in this moment in time, I have the happiness because I'm experiencing it.

I just think it's going to be there.

And so the analogy I use with my friends often is I go, why is it that all boys grow up wanting a Ferrari, but they've never been in one?

Like genuinely, you know, and not to not to reduce a person to a vehicle, but I just think of like the images, images, and it's a simple one.

Boys grow into men who dream of a Ferrari.

Why?

You've never been in one.

You've never owned one.

You've never, I want a Ferrari.

I want a Ferrari.

It's like, why?

Oh, because

then I'll what?

And over time, if you're lucky enough, either you do experience it, it is or it isn't what you thought.

But even without it, you can realize

you've never been in it, and yet you truly believe that it's going to make you happy.

And if you envision yourself in it, you even become happy, then it's not the Ferrari you want.

It's the idea of the Ferrari that makes you happy.

And if you can try to pursue that feeling, you can find it in your friends putting their mattresses in your dorm room.

Anywhere.

You truly, and I know sometimes people are like, oh, that sounds like,

but I won't lie,

to your stories of like running on rooftops and going shopping and late night conversations.

That's the thing that I think we need to hold on to more is the idea and the understanding of the feeling that's behind the idea, not just the idea itself.

So, no, I never, I never reached out.

I never did.

But

I'm glad you, you know, I'm glad you didn't regret.

Like, you pursued love.

You

pursued love, but you know, Asar was not my first love.

I had a crush before Asar,

and

this was before I had met Asar.

So, you know, just to disclose.

No clipping internet.

Exactly.

Don't worry.

We'll

see.

It's in full.

No clipping.

But it was a similar thing that

this guy, Tarek, was this mysterious boy in college.

Yeah.

And there was not much that I knew about him, but I knew he was cool because there were secrets about him.

And he was that guy who gets in trouble.

And somehow I thought maybe I could fix him.

So I would

ask him questions like,

why are you upset?

Then he he would complain about the essays and the tutors.

And I said, Why is nobody helping you?

I think we have to talk to your tutors.

Let me bring this up to the principal.

And he said, Nah, man, it's just, you know, it's just bad boy, Tariq.

Bad boy.

And

yeah, like he would just come to my room and eat bananas and any snacks and then leave.

But for me, I knew that I could not be with Tariq.

Tariq was just an idea.

It was that feeling.

Yeah.

And

was never even going to become real.

And I did not even know why I was chasing him because at the time I didn't want to get married or I didn't want to have a boyfriend or any of that.

Like, um, was that because

what was it?

Just culture.

I was still new in college.

Right, right.

It was so overwhelming.

Like, I was still fighting for my right to wear jeans.

I was not going to think about a guy.

And with Tariq, I knew it was like, this, but there's something about him that I'm somehow chasing him.

And in the end, he disappears from college because, you know, he's that boy who gets in trouble and, you know, he's that bad boy somehow.

But I just, I just love that I had that experience where I felt like I was a part of something.

I did not really cross the line, but I was in it.

I don't know.

Somehow, it just, it just was my first love experience that was truly one-sided.

We all need those, I feel like, at some point.

It was just this idea.

I was trying to like feel it.

And

yeah, it was just from a distance, it was all an imagination.

And sometimes I feel like it was a dream.

And then I meet Asar, who, you know, I'm like, wow, he's also handsome.

Let's consider him.

That's beautiful.

You know, you know what?

I love that you say it's like a dream and it's an imagination.

But I think that's what it is.

It's a powerful imagination.

And the older I've gotten, the more I've realized it's an imagination that we have of ourselves.

Yeah, that's one of the most complicated things to learn about like love in those moments, or the idea that we have of the love is that

that person is either seeing us or allowing us to feel seen in a way that we haven't before, or in a way that we feel good, or feel comfortable, and feel.

And there's something beautiful in that.

Like, do you know what I mean?

It's just like you imagining yourself because, again, to your point, it hasn't happened.

I wanted to be the main character.

I thought it was a movie, and I had watched so many Indian movies and TV dramas that for me was that moment that there's this mysterious guy.

It's a typical story who's not looking at you, but he is the one because he's not looking at you.

He's so amazing.

And he's good looking and all of that.

But, you know,

I don't want to use rude words, but you know.

A-S-S-H-O-L-E-E.

Oh, asshole.

I'll say it for you.

I can be a rude word saying

that.

Yeah, Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, sort of like that.

Whenever you need to say that word, you just call me and I'll pop up there and be like, asshole.

So, you know, at the time,

I did not know if I would be loved by somebody.

I could not love myself either.

But that was just the first time that I was feeling something where I thought,

maybe in imagination,

there are no rules.

And

it's okay for me to have a crush on this guy and to be curious about life and sort of follow him around, check on him.

Does he need any help?

Get him biscuits and tea and whatever he needs.

But he did not want my help, to be honest, other than the food.

He was a boy

just always in trouble, and then he disappeared.

When you thought of yourself

in love or being loved,

was it ever difficult to bridge the gap between who you saw yourself as and who everyone else thought you were?

Like, how do you love a saint?

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

I think

I wanted that person to not see me as a saint.

I wanted that person to

see me for who I was.

And

Asar

from the start

never

received me as the Malana or as the girl he had heard about somewhere.

He never even asked me a single question.

I think even to this day, like we never talk about what happened and what was life like in Swat Valley.

And,

you know, he read my book, I think, around the wedding time or after that, just to catch up on the story.

Because

I feel like he thought my dad asked, might ask him questions.

So, you know, for him, it just didn't matter.

For him,

he saw the malala that was in front of him and she was growing.

She was learning.

She was still asking questions and she was still figuring things out.

Like he accepted me for who I was and who I was becoming.

That was really

life-changing because even now I don't feel like I have to be this like fixed version of me.

We're just so open with each other.

We giggle, we laugh.

I can be so silly with him.

I'm truly like myself.

I don't think twice when I say something in front of him.

That's the best thing.

It's not about, like, oh, am I hurting your feelings or something?

And, and you're not hurting your feelings.

Like, somehow, you just, you know, how to look after each other, how to keep each other happy.

And

even like, and because

he's just like so amazing that sometimes, even if I am like upset about something, it's just so minute.

But for him,

he cannot see me upset.

So he will take it very seriously.

He'll just like stop everything.

And he said, let's resolve the issue.

And I'm like, no, it's fine.

It's not a big deal.

No, nothing is going on.

No, I'm fine.

We'll, you know, just talk about it later.

And he's like, no, tell me what happened.

And

I think one time I told him that when he

drinks his like protein shake, he sort of leaves the glass and then I pick it up and I rinse it.

So I was like, This is a big deal.

Why do I have to rinse your glass?

And I was like, Petriaki, man, all of these things.

I was like, I'm advocating for girls' rights.

I do not want to be an advocate at home.

You know, imagine like you're fighting a battle, and then suddenly you're like, I have to fix the guy at home, too.

So I was like, no, nothing.

And then I was like, well, you know, my mom was here as well.

And like, I just felt so much pressure.

And I thought

it's not that it was just us too.

I felt like like people were watching us as well.

And I thought they were judging us.

And he was like,

oh, you know, it's like, we split work.

Like, you know, you do the dishwasher, but I do the clothes washing and I do the laundry and all of that.

And I was like, yeah, you kind of do a lot more things than me.

That's true.

But there's something about the dishes.

And I was like, it's just like my mom also noticed it.

And then he said, like, yeah, sort of like, you're right.

Yeah, of course I should like, you know, pick up the dishes or whatever I use and put them in the dishwasher.

Like

that point onwards, it's been like two, three years now,

I have never seen him like leave his

class.

Yeah.

I mean, then the human rights speech worked.

No, it's just me being upset that work, just making, you know, it a big drama.

A little bit of drama.

I wish I could do the same outside.

Like 122 million girls out of school.

What are you guys doing?

I'm not going to talk to you.

Yeah, just.

This is what I want to tell leaders.

Why would you not invest in girls' education?

Why would you not put money in there when you know the benefits are

exponential?

It will improve economies.

It will reduce poverty.

It will help tackle climate change.

It will

help create a better, safer future.

Why is it that 120 million girls do not have the right to be in school?

What do they say to you when you ask them these questions?

I think it's the same old thing.

Like,

in the last five years, we have committed more than this many million

dollars.

And we are committed more than ever.

Pledging and committing, yeah.

And we know that there's a huge gap in funding for education.

Climate-related events, these wars and conflicts are worsening it.

Afghanistan is the most extreme case because when the Taliban took power four years ago, they immediately announced a ban on girls' education.

Girls are not allowed to be in school beyond grade six.

Women cannot be in universities.

Women cannot work.

They cannot be in the parliament.

They cannot play sports.

They cannot go see a doctor without a male chaperone.

They cannot visit a park.

They cannot even speak loudly when they are inside their houses.

That's how much the Taliban are controlling the lives of women, from their voices to how they're dressed to their movement?

It is like the most

systemic, oppressive regime that the women are living under right now.

And it's painful to see it happening

every day.

Very painful to see it.

And the Afghan women are like living it.

And,

but in this time, when I think about the bravery and the courage of the Afghan women who are standing up to the Taliban, and they want to like reclaim the old lives they had.

It's not that these

women had a,

were sort of used to this culture.

No, they had fought really hard for their right to be working, to be in school, and the Taliban just suddenly took all of that away from them.

Afghan activists are calling it a gender apartheid, that this is systemic oppression in which women are oppressed simply based on their gender.

If they were born a boy, they would have a different life.

But But they are born a girl.

They cannot be in school.

They cannot imagine to work.

And it's the Taliban who are determining their lives and restricting them to the four walls of their houses.

They are erasing women from public life in any political participation.

They're literally erasing women.

And

they're punishing women for

disobeying any of these rules.

That's the most important thing because people often think that gender discrimination is a problem in a lot of countries and in the global south or that, you know, these things happen, it's culture, it's this and that.

And I'm not saying that that is not a reality.

Of course, that is.

And things weren't perfect for women and girls in Afghanistan before the Taliban.

But what's different under the Taliban regime is that it is systemic.

The people who are supposed to protect civilians, the people who are supposed to give justice to women and girls, are the ones who are the perpetrators.

They are committing the crimes.

It is systemic crime where they are abusing their power.

And in cases like these, where do the women go?

Because

they can't seek justice from the Taliban.

The Taliban police are the ones who are arresting them for simply daring to learn or go to a secret school or protest or simply go to work.

So many of these households are run by women.

Women are the breadwinners, and the Taliban just do not allow them to work.

So it's a very difficult

place for women right now, but I'm always inspired by their resilience and their courage and how they're fighting back.

The activists who are in exile are

doing advocacy globally from codifying gender apartheid to bringing women's issues to the stage to also pushing for the inclusion of women and girls on the agenda where any peace talks and dialogues are happening to also women being present in those rooms where decisions about the future of Afghanistan are made.

And at the same time, they are like running projects in the country as well.

So, at Malala Fund, we are supporting both.

We are giving grants to organizations who are putting pressure on leaders to hold the Taliban accountable.

And at the same time, we are also giving grants to organizations who are providing alternative education from radios to television to underground schools to offline and online platforms.

We're using everything that we can to keep girls learning as many as we can.

I can't help but wonder, as you're saying that,

you know, oftentimes when we are told these stories, if you live in a country like the United States or the UK or, you know, any of the more powerful nations, oftentimes it sounds like people are saying, well, invade or, you know, it swings between two worlds, either fully come in with a militarized force or do nothing.

It's a binary that reduces the solution down to only two when it feels like it could be more nuanced.

So,

when you're looking at the situation, you know, you're talking to activists and you're talking to advocates.

What are some of the things you think world leaders could actually be doing beyond going in and then just creating more war and more turmoil?

I think for me, it was never about whether the military should have stayed there forever.

Or

for me, it was about how they left.

Yeah, definitely.

And in what state they left the country.

They did not give power to the local people.

I think the US just suddenly brought the Taliban out of nowhere to these peace talks, like so-called peace talks.

The Taliban had little control.

And suddenly the US was like, we're going to leave and we're going to bring you back so we can negotiate with you, like negotiate on what?

And Afghan women and girls were not included.

Their issues were not really brought up, they were pushed aside.

And

what's happening in Afghanistan is because of what the Taliban are doing right now.

But I think the countries who let that happen and who are still silent and looking away are also complicit.

They should also be held accountable.

And that's why I think that campaigns like codifying gender apartheid in the Crime Against Humanity Treaty or just like really questioning our international law is important because

like when such horrible things happen, like, you know, I think about the ghosts, I'm like, is anybody thinking about them?

Why are the Taliban

getting away with it?

Four years and somehow we are still saying if and but and this and that and and leaders are sometimes just issuing a statement saying,

yes, Afghan women deserve a better future.

And that's it.

They don't do anything.

They're They're not putting any pressure on the Taliban.

Some countries are even normalizing their relationships with Afghanistan.

Oh, wow, I didn't know that.

And

the women are still, even in the last UN talks between the Taliban and the UN representatives in Doha, Afghan women and girls were excluded.

That was 2024.

I had a call with

the UN Secretary General and I highlighted this that we cannot decide the future of Afghan women when they're not present in the rooms.

They are half of the population.

Anything that's decided about the future of Afghanistan is also about their futures.

So they must be included.

I think it's, you know, it's about solidarity and support for each other.

We need to share more empathy.

We need to share their stories.

And sometimes we feel helpless.

You know, what can we do?

I think there are options out there from supporting the Afghan activists to their organizations, or asking your representatives and your governments about what they are doing.

And

but sometimes it's just simply sharing their stories, simply paying attention to like, or just stopping for a second and learning about what's happening in Afghanistan is a form of solidarity.

Yeah, I think it's it's providing a complexity

and a human side to a statistic, you know, so that it's not just a statistic.

If anything,

that's one of the lessons that I learned from reading

your book now is

it reminded me that we all have an obligation in a beautiful way, by the way,

not as like a task, but in a beautiful way to think of ourselves as the people we're trying to help.

Yeah.

You know, and

it actually made me wonder if

your journey, you know,

the malala who goes to Birmingham, the malala who then goes and studies in Oxford, the malala who starts an organization, the malala who falls in love, who gets married, as you got to explore and,

you know, flesh out these parts of yourselves as fully as you have, do you think that's reinvigorated your fight?

Do you think that's made you want to go back even more?

Because

it shows you how much more there is to fight for?

I think I started my journey as an activist as an idealist.

And that's partly because I was very young when I became an activist.

Now I'm 28 and I have experienced so much more than when I was 11 or 15.

And that

visionary, optimistic

child malala is still in there.

But I feel there's a bit more cynical and skeptical Malala

who has also seen rejections, rejections we always remember, who has seen setbacks, how the whole country of Afghanistan can be

a place for women and girls where they do not have any rights.

They suddenly become second-class citizens

to

see how still we are so behind on creating a world where every child can be in school and can have the opportunity to learn.

Like it should be a right.

Nobody should be in any way limited in learning.

It's the simple right to like be able to read a book.

It's crazy that it's even considered a luxury in many ways.

You know, just if you think about it, and I know with technology, things are changing and it's a different story in like developed countries, but I'm like, whatever you want to call it, online or homeschooling or whatever you want to call it, that debate is separate, but it's just this right to learn.

And to see how many millions of girls and children are denied this right is shocking.

Like we're still living in this time, we are making progress on so many things and still we are leaving like this

generation of children

without an education.

So I think that's like it's the foundation.

It's the foundation of who we become and what opportunities we can have in life.

It's a step towards progress.

It's a step towards more prosperous economy.

And there are so many benefits.

And for me, it's, you know, it's like the reality of the world we're living in right now.

That

with an education, I believe girls can

make decisions about their life and they can choose their own future.

That's the most important thing.

We cannot let them be in a place where their future is decided by somebody else.

Yeah, let them be the main characters in their stories.

Or their culture, or you know, whoever it is, elders or whatever that is.

It's them making those choices for themselves without pressure, without judgment, that they can be free souls.

I really love that.

And I appreciate you sharing that.

I think that was my favorite takeaway.

And

it sort of ties everything up perfectly.

When I read the book,

some of the main themes I thought of was,

one,

we should never take for granted the power and value of belonging.

for ourselves in our lives, for the communities we're in, for the societies we build, you know, for refugees, for immigrants.

Like nobody doesn't want to be where they're from.

Nobody doesn't want to be with their people.

And if we remember that, we then try and make sure that their worlds are better so that they can be in their world instead of fighting with them coming into our world.

And then the other one that I really enjoyed you sharing is that it's always a work in progress.

You know, it's like we find you at this moment in time as Malala.

And we'll find you at another moment in time in the future.

And we'll find, but in the same way, you as a person are

a work in progress.

All of these issues, life is a work in progress.

We're still trying to figure it out.

We're still trying to, you know, we'll see.

Do we want to wear jeans or do we not want to wear jeans?

You know, we'll figure it out as we go.

So, yeah, I appreciate you sharing it.

Thank you.

For me, I see a sense of belonging in a very different way than I used to.

I thought it was always about the place where you were born, where you spent your childhood.

And now, with time, I'm realizing that I have actually spent a lot more time outside Pakistan than I have inside Pakistan.

But that strong bond and connection with the country where I was born can never be taken away.

Even if I spend the rest of my life somewhere on Mars, it can never be taken away.

I feel like a part of me belongs to that soil, to that air, like I'm there.

Like my soul is somehow there.

It is, but it is.

I genuinely believe that.

And when I visited my parents' village, Shangla, where we had built a school, and I wanted to visit that school and just see the girls, like the first class that were graduating.

But I also saw the graveyard of my grandmother, Abai, who was so dear to me.

And I just could not imagine losing her because I thought she was somebody who was praying for me all the time.

I felt safe when she was there.

And when she was gone, I immediately felt that something had gone missing in my life.

But when I visited her grave, I realized that she was there.

She was there in the air, and I just felt her presence, and I felt her prayers.

But now, like, I'm traveling, I am spending time with my friends, with my husband,

and I don't find that home and belonging just in the places, in the locations where I am, but it's among the people.

That's the idea.

It's with my siblings, that little fight that we have, the argument.

It's with my mom and dad, it's with my husband when we are just binge watching a TV show.

It's everywhere where I meet incredible girls, activists who give me hope, who inspire me, and whose work is really changing the world for people out there.

I always

have this sense of relief and happiness in my heart when I see the work of other people.

And I know they're doing so much more that we don't see, that we don't hear about but they are changing the lives of people they're changing their communities and

and you know

and

I feel safer and I feel happier when I see that world and I think you know we should always like hold hands together and be in solidarity with each other and I just for me ideally like this whole globe should be our home you know that we are more friendly and more

we're nicer to each other kinder to each other yeah as my brother says it the best way.

He says,

whenever you feel skeptical and you feel like the whole world is going the wrong way, which it can in many times, he always says, go outside and touch grass.

Just go outside, touch grass.

You'll see somebody else on that grass, and that might be the beginning of a new friendship.

And so I appreciate you for that.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining me here.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for inspiring me, but also reminding me that you're not only inspirational.

I like that.

I like to know that you flawed because it makes me feel a little better about myself.

Oh, you're welcome.

Thank you so much, Vanala.

Thank you.

This is great.

What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM.

The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin, and Jess Hackle.

Rebecca Chain is our producer.

Our development researcher is Marcia Robiou.

Music, Mixing and Mastering by Hannes Brown.

Random Other Stuff by Ryan Hardruth.

Thank you so much for listening.

Join me next week for another episode of What Now.

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