The character arc of Malala Yousafzai
Born 12 July 1997 in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. Between then and now sit an anonymous blog written under Taliban rule at eleven, a bullet fired into her head on the school bus at fifteen, a long recovery in a foreign hospital, a speech to the United Nations on her sixteenth birthday, and the Nobel Peace Prize at seventeen. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Tap the line to pluck it. Hover or tap any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Malala Yousafzai?
They shot her for reading. She got louder.
When the Taliban took her valley and began closing girls' schools, she was eleven, and she started writing an anonymous diary for the BBC under a pen name, describing what it was like to be a girl forbidden to learn. She began speaking out under her own name, and on 9 October 2012, at fifteen, a gunman boarded her school bus, asked for her by name, and shot her in the head.
She was flown to Birmingham in England and survived, after surgeries that rebuilt part of her skull and her hearing. The attack meant to silence her did the opposite. On her sixteenth birthday she stood at the United Nations and said that one child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world, and that the terrorists had thought a bullet would silence them but had failed. A year later she became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
She went on to graduate from Oxford and to build a fund for girls' education worldwide, and she is clear that she does not want to be remembered as the girl who was shot, but as the girl who fought back. Her line is worth reading for its hinge: the lowest point on it, a bullet meant to end her voice, is exactly where her voice reached the world.
The moments
Malala Yousafzai's timeline.
The 2000s
Spoke up for girls' schools
Milestone, and it changed her direction. At eleven, she asked publicly how the Taliban dared take away her basic right to learn.
Blogged for the BBC
Milestone. An anonymous diary of life as a girl forbidden to go to school, written under a pen name.
The 2010s
Won a national peace prize
Milestone. The first winner of the country's youth peace prize, and a rising target.
Shot on the school bus
Setback, and it changed everything. A gunman asked for her by name and shot her in the head. She was fifteen.
Flown to Birmingham
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Surgeries rebuilt part of her skull and her hearing. The attack that meant to silence her did not.
Go quiet and safe, or louder
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: speak louder than the bullet, taken, or withdraw into safety. She said the terrorists thought a bullet would silence her, and that they failed.
Spoke at the United Nations
Milestone, and it changed her direction. On her sixteenth birthday: one child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.
Published I Am Malala
Milestone. The memoir that carried the story of the valley and the bullet to the world.
The Nobel Peace Prize
Milestone, and it changed everything. The youngest laureate in history, at seventeen, still sitting her school exams.
The 2020s
Graduated from Oxford
Milestone. A degree in philosophy, politics and economics, eight years after the attack.
Married Asser Malik
Everyday. A quiet ceremony in Birmingham, on her own terms and her own timeline.
Honoured, and still fighting
Milestone. More than a decade on, still saying the work for girls is far from done.
The line reaches today still fighting, which is why it is drawn now rather than at the end. What it has set moving is already everywhere: the girls in classrooms her fund helped open, and every person who was told a threat should quiet them and got louder instead.
Your turn
Every story draws a unique line.
Hers is not yet three decades in and already global. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about three minutes.
Sources
- Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala, 2013.
- Her United Nations address, 12 July 2013.
- The Nobel Prize archive, nobelprize.org: the 2014 Peace Prize.
- The BBC Urdu diary of Gul Makai, 2009.
- The Malala Fund.