I Am Malala summary

Perhaps the key lesson that Malala’s father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, passed on to her was a great passion for education.

But to gain an education for himself, Ziauddin had to overcome a number of obstacles, including a lack of support from his own father. For instance, even though Ziauddin was accepted into a teaching program at a university in Swat – where education is free – his father refused to help with his living expenses.  

We often think of famous figures as somehow infallible, but Malala had the faults and desires of any young girl. Like everyone else, she was no saint and made many mistakes.

As a child, Malala often played with a friend, Safina. Safina’s family was wealthier than Malala’s, and she owned many dolls and pieces of jewelry. Nevertheless, Safina often eyed Malala’s prized pink toy cellphone. So, when one day Malala noticed that it’d gone missing, she became certain that Safina had stolen it.

When radical Islamists came to the Swat Valley, their influence began to have a disastrous effect on the lives of its inhabitants.

The rise of the Taliban – an Islamic extremist political movement that, until 2001, ruled Afghanistan – began in 2002.

The situation in Pakistan and in the Swat Valley quickly deteriorated.

The mullah Fazlullah was gaining considerable political power and, in 2008, he announced that girls would not be allowed to attend school the following year.

Malala was no stranger to recognition, as she was often top of her class at school. But now she was starting to get recognition outside of the classroom, and on a much larger scale. She was nominated for a number of international awards, and won many of them.

In October 2011, Malala received word that she was one of five nominees for the international peace prize of KidsRights, an advocacy group for childrens’ rights, based in Amsterdam.

In 2009, the Pakistani Army entered Swat and started military operations against the Taliban.

For residents of Swat, this meant much physical and psychological upheaval. Malala and her family were forced to leave their home for three months and travel around Pakistan. They became what is commonly known as internally displaced persons.

On October 9, 2012, Malala’s life would change forever. While travelling home after taking a school exam, she was shot.

In the face of regular threats, Malala’s mother made her not walk to and from school but take the bus instead. Hardly a conventional school bus, the vehicle was a truck retrofitted with three parallel benches at the rear, one along each side and one in the middle.

Malala’s condition began to worsen, with her chances at surviving lessening by the day.

Following her initial surgery, Malala developed disseminated intravascular coagulation – her blood was not clotting, so her blood pressure was becoming dangerously low and her blood acid level was rising. Also, her kidneys were beginning to fail.

Though Malala survived the attempt on her life, her path to recovery had only just begun.

As a bullet had severed the facial nerve that controlled the left side of Malala’s face, she was left with an eye that bulged and a smile that looked more like a painful grimace.