\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span> am at the shed where Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai smoked her first bong. No, there\u2019s no punchline \u2013 it\u2019s not that kind of anecdote. \u201cMy life has changed for ever,\u201d Yousafzai says sadly, as we gaze at the semi-derelict structure. \u201cEverything changed for ever, after that [night].\u201d<\/p>\n The shed is tucked away at the back of Lady Margaret Hall, away from the prying eyes of Oxford\u2019s college life. You have to know how to find it. Yousafzai leads me through quadrangles and out into a hidden garden. Inside are dusty pint glasses and spiderwebs, and board games with the pieces missing.<\/p>\n We are meeting on a bright summer afternoon, ahead of the release of her memoir, Finding My Way, a sequel to her 2013 bestseller I Am Malala. Dressed in a blue shirt, jeans and a headscarf, Yousafzai is accompanied, at a discreet distance, by two close-protection officers. The college is quiet \u2013 it\u2019s the summer holidays \u2013 and Yousafzai attracts no attention from the few students who remain as she tramps across the grass.<\/p>\n <\/span>Blazer: Sandro. Dress: Issey Miyake. Earrings: Alighieri<\/span><\/p>\n This is not our first interview. Our last conversation sparked days of negative headlines for Yousafzai, back\u00a0home in her native Pakistan. As we gaze at the bong-shed, I fear that round two may lead to more of the same.<\/p>\n In 2021, I profiled a then-23-year-old Yousafzai for the cover of British Vogue. The world\u2019s youngest Nobel laureate \u2013 she received the award at 17, for her activism for girls\u2019 education \u2013 had recently graduated from university and was about to launch her adult life.<\/p>\n Yousafzai began campaigning at the age of\u00a011. Her father, Ziauddin, is an education activist and she followed in his footsteps, writing a blog for BBC Urdu about her life as the Taliban shut down girls\u2019 schools across Pakistan\u2019s Swat valley where she lived. When a Taliban gunman shot her in the head on her school bus when she was just 15 years old, Yousafzai was airlifted to the UK and made a remarkable recovery, resettling with her family in Birmingham, where she attended secondary school, all the while campaigning for the rights of girls around the world to receive an education.<\/p>\n <\/span>Yousafzai recovering at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham 10 days after the attack.<\/span> Photograph: PG P \/ Shutterstock<\/p>\n When I met Yousafzai in April 2021, she had just got a\u00a02.1 from Oxford in politics, philosophy and economics, and signed a deal with Apple TV+ to develop and produce her own slate of TV and films. (The deal has now ended.) We did an interview at a hotel in London before walking around a Covid-era St James\u2019s Park. When I asked her\u00a0if\u00a0she had a romantic partner, she blanched. \u201cI would say that I have come across people who have been great, and I hope that I\u00a0do find someone,\u201d she stuttered, visibly embarrassed.<\/p>\n Later, she mused on marriage. \u201cI still don\u2019t understand why people have to get married,\u201d she told me. \u201cIf you want to have a person in your life, why do you have to sign marriage papers, why can\u2019t it just be a partnership?\u201d<\/p>\n Her comments seemed unexceptional. I was more concerned that the fact she\u2019d told me that she frequented pubs could create controversy, given that Yousafzai is Muslim, and so when I wrote up the interview I was careful to specify that she did not drink alcohol.<\/p>\n The article came out. Yousafzai shared it, and sent me a message of thanks. The following day, logging on to Twitter (now X), I saw that #shameonMalala was trending in Pakistan. Her comments had been widely misinterpreted to mean that she was denouncing nikah<\/em>, the Islamic institution of marriage, and implicitly to suggest that she condoned premarital sex.<\/p>\n She led Pakistan\u2019s national news for days. Online commentators accused Yousafzai of betraying her religion as a result of western indoctrination. An\u00a0influential cleric tagged her father on Twitter, asking him to explain his daughter\u2019s un-Islamic remarks. (He responded, saying they had been taken out of context.) Parliamentarians in an assembly in north-west Pakistan even debated her comments.<\/p>\n Yousafzai maintained a dignified silence. And then, in November 2021, she announced her surprise wedding to Pakistani cricket manager Asser Malik. Many, including myself, struggled to make sense of it.<\/p>\n <\/span>Shirt: Stella McCartney. Skirt: Kent & Curwen. Headscarf and shoes: Gucci<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/em>Malala, what happened<\/em>?!\u201d I ask now as she walks, alone, into an empty conference room and greets me with a hug.<\/p>\n She smiles sheepishly. \u201cWhen you asked that question [about meeting someone],\u201d she says, \u201cI\u00a0felt like I was caught. It was like, wait a second, does she know anything? I was like, no, no, no, you know, I just don\u2019t want to get married.\u201d<\/p>\n In Finding My Way, Yousafzai reveals that, by the time of the Vogue interview, she and Malik were already dating. In other words, Yousafzai over-corrected to throw me off the scent.<\/p>\n But she was sincere in having her doubts about marriage. Growing up in Pakistan, she says, it represented \u201ca future without any opportunity, where your husband determines your life\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>Yousafzai with her husband Asser Malik last month.<\/span> Photograph: David Fisher\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n After the furore, her parents, but particularly her mother, were distraught. \u201cShe was so <\/em>mad at me,\u201d Yousafzai says. Family and friends kept texting articles. An imam from her village called to lecture her parents on the phone. \u201cI was facing a lot of pressure,\u201d she says, \u201cfrom my dad, especially, and my mum, to issue a statement to clarify what my thoughts were on marriage, and I found this absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n And then there was Malik. Yousafzai\u2019s parents had met him, but she hadn\u2019t felt ready to make the relationship public. She felt guilty for disavowing him publicly, but Malik didn\u2019t blame her, and instead stepped in to help mediate with her parents. Over the following months, Yousafzai began to interrogate her views on marriage. She asked Malik about his thoughts on women and equality, and liked what she heard. \u201cI\u2019m supposed to be an advocate for girls and women, and even I was limiting my own self in how I perceived marriage,\u201d Yousafzai says.<\/p>\n But there were other pressures, familiar to any immigrant child who has butted up against their parents\u2019 cultural expectations. When Malik and Yousafzai left the house together, her mother would urge them to \u201cmaintain, like, a 10-foot distance\u201d, she says.<\/p>\n It seems from reading Finding My Way that she would not have married so young were it not for her parents. She nods. \u201cI felt like I was sort of giving up,\u201d she says. Refusing to marry would have led to not only interfamilial, but international, conflict. \u201cAm I willing to fight my mum and my dad? Am I\u00a0willing to start a new debate on people living together without these ceremonies and traditions?\u201d Yousafzai realised that she couldn\u2019t live with Malik \u201cwithout getting married in the traditional way, in the religious way\u201d.<\/p>\n She could dig her heels in, but it would cause immense pain to her parents. And, besides, she was in love. \u201cHe\u2019s so charming, he\u2019s so smart, and I just could not stop thinking about him.\u201d So she relented. On 9\u00a0November 2021, at her parents\u2019 house in Birmingham, in an Islamic ceremony, Yousafzai married.<\/p>\n A<\/span>fter marriage, Yousafzai realised that\u00a0\u201cthings feel sort of the same. They\u2019re not that different.\u201d She lives with Malik in a riverside apartment in London. They split the chores; neither cooks, instead\u00a0eating out or using a meal delivery service. (Yousafzai\u2019s mother thinks this is \u201ca disaster. She says, \u2018Your house is the only ahouse where there\u2019s a fridge with no vegetables!\u2019\u201d)<\/p>\n It has been only four years since we met, but Yousafzai is much changed. The woman I met before appeared girlish, even a little gauche. She was visibly mortified when we spoke about relationships. Now, she is grounded and at ease. She also looks subtly different, having undergone surgery to improve the facial paralysis she suffered after the attack.<\/p>\n At university, Yousafzai experienced the sweetness of independent adult life for the first time. When we met in 2021, she described a whirl of college balls, societies and essay crises. Now she\u2019s more willing to share the unvarnished reality of her university experience.<\/p>\n I thought nothing could scare me, nothing. And then I was scared of small things, and that just broke me<\/span>Skirt, shirt and scarf: Jacquemus. Earrings: Pond London. Cuff: Charlotte Chesnais. Head scarf: stylist\u2019s own<\/span><\/p>\n In Finding My Way, Yousafzai writes of the pressures of having to travel internationally, maintaining the relationships critical to the Malala Fund, which supports girls\u2019 education projects around the world, in addition to paid speaking gigs. She is the breadwinner not only for her parents and two brothers, but also for her extended family back home in Pakistan, and even family friends. (At one point, she was paying for two family friends to attend college, in the US and Canada.)<\/p>\n Did she feel resentful of these financial obligations? \u201cIt was difficult to manage,\u201d Yousafzai says. She \u201chated the experience of thinking about our expenses for the next year and [thinking], OK, I have to do this event, because otherwise we won\u2019t be able to cover these costs.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Yousafzai displays her medal during the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony in Norway, 2014. <\/span> Photograph: Cornelius Poppe\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Her studies suffered. Yousafzai got a 2.2 in her first-year exams and had to seek additional support from specialist tutors, a humbling experience for the most famous education activist in the world. \u201cI felt like an impostor,\u201d she laughs. \u201cI felt ashamed.\u201d She asked her tutor to write a letter to her parents explaining that she was forbidden from working during term time because she was failing her degree. Why didn\u2019t she tell her parents herself? \u201cI had talked to my family many times about the pressure,\u201d she says, \u201cand how difficult it was to manage.\u201d<\/p>\n She writes of how, at home in Birmingham, \u201cmy dad treated our house like an art museum, and me like the signature piece in the collection\u201d. She would be summoned downstairs to meet visitors keen to gawp at a Nobel laureate up close. \u201cMy dad is a very generous person,\u201d she says, \u201ca giving person, and he always understood what other people wanted \u2026 in his heart, he knew that they wanted to meet me.\u201d<\/p>\n Have there been times, I ask, where he\u2019s pushed you too much?<\/p>\n \u201cOh,\u201d she laughs, \u201che has physically <\/em>pushed me.\u201d When meeting well-wishers or guests at family events, Ziauddin has given her the odd shove. \u201cYou know when you have a little kid, and you sort of push the kid [to] say hello to this person? I\u2019m, like, it\u2019s fine when they\u2019re little kids, you know.\u201d But even when she\u2019s grouching, it\u2019s clear Yousafzai has tremendous love and respect for the man who, however inadvertently, propelled her on to the world stage. \u201cMy dad has always been supportive,\u201d she says. \u201cWhenever I explain something to him, he completely understands it. He is one of those cool dads, who never disagrees with me.\u201d<\/p>\n But I fear even the world\u2019s most down-to-earth father may have concerns about what Yousafzai \u2013 whose new book is likely to be a bestseller (her first memoir sold nearly 2m copies) \u2013 is about to put in the public domain.<\/p>\n A<\/span>nd so to the bong incident. What happened that night: Yousafzai tried to walk back to her room, but she blacked out en route. A girlfriend carried her back instead. She couldn\u2019t sleep. Her brain endlessly replayed a loop of the day the Taliban attempted to murder her. The gun. The bloodspray. Her body being carried through crowds to an ambulance.<\/p>\n She had always thought she couldn\u2019t remember being shot. But the bong unlocked long-submerged memories, of the attack and also of a childhood growing up under the spectre of Taliban violence. \u201cI\u00a0had never felt so close to the attack as then, in that moment,\u201d she tells me. \u201cI felt like I was reliving all of it, and there was a time when I just thought I was in the afterlife.\u201d She felt she was dying, or already dead. \u201cIt\u2019s easier to laugh about it now,\u201d she says, with a small, tight smile.<\/p>\n Listening to her speak, I feel deep compassion for all she went through as a young child. \u201cI was nine or 10 when the Taliban took over control in our valley,\u201d she says, \u201cand they would bomb schools, they would kill or slaughter people and hang their bodies upside down.\u201d<\/p>\n After the bong, Yousafzai developed anxiety. \u201cI felt numb \u2026 I couldn\u2019t recognise myself in the mirror,\u201d she says. The sweetness of college life fell away. She told her parents in general terms about the incident, but \u201cthey were a bit dismissive\u201d, she says. She struggled to tell them how much it had affected her mental health. \u201cI\u00a0just could not explain to them that things are not the same any more.\u201d<\/p>\n Optimism is the only way you can keep going, because there\u2019s no other option<\/p>\n Friends were worried about her. (Maria, her personal assistant, who lives in London, was so concerned she drove up to be with her immediately after the incident.) Yousafzai lied and told them things were fine. \u201cI\u2019m the girl who was shot \u2026 I\u2019m supposed to be a brave girl,\u201d she says. Until she couldn\u2019t pretend any longer. \u201cI\u2019d\u00a0be sweating and shaking and I could hear my heart beat. Then I started getting panic attacks.\u201d She saw a therapist, and realised that her childhood, the attempted murder and exam stress were overwhelming her mental health. In the book, Yousafzai writes a list of her symptoms at the time: a racing heart, finding it hard to breathe, struggles sleeping, brain fog and a\u00a0constant fear of someone she loved dying. \u201cNormal people don\u2019t have lists like this,\u201d she writes, adding, <\/em>\u201cSomething is wrong with me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI survived an attack,\u201d she says, \u201cand nothing happened to me, and I laughed it off. I thought nothing could scare me, nothing. My heart was so strong. And then I was scared of small things, and that just broke me. But, you know, in this journey I\u00a0realised what it means to be actually brave. When you can not only fight the real threats out there, but fight within.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Inside Saturday<\/span><\/p>\n The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend.<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Has becoming famous so young also had an impact? \u201cYes,\u201d Yousafzai says, nodding emphatically. She talks about how young she was when she started winning awards, and what it was like to go to ceremonies and see activists there who had spent decades fighting for a cause. It made her feel as if she needed to \u201cspend the rest of my life campaigning for girls\u2019 education\u201d to show she was worthy.<\/p>\n But no matter how many leaders she lobbied, or projects she helped to fund \u2013 Yousafzai glows when she talks about the girls\u2019 school she opened back home \u2013 she felt it was not enough. There was \u201calways this feeling \u2026 could I do more?\u201d Her youthful idealism began to flake and peel off in patches, and then rub clean away. \u201cAs I\u00a0was getting older,\u201d she says, \u201cI was realising that things are not as straightforward. Things are more complex.\u201d<\/p>\n As a teen, Yousafzai had seen the world as a biddable place. She would reason with world leaders! Show them girls\u2019 education was important! As she got older, she began to see the world as it really is.<\/p>\n You became cynical? I ask.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah,\u201d she says, \u201cfor sure.\u201d She gives a bitter, clipped laugh. \u201c100%.\u201d<\/p>\n I<\/span>n April 2021, the US announced it was withdrawing from Afghanistan in August of that year. Within days of them leaving, the Taliban took over the country. \u201cWe had calls with the Afghan activists who the Malala Fund were supporting,\u201d she says, \u201cand it was just unbelievable. Some of them knew the worst was coming. Some of them still had faith.\u201d<\/p>\n Afghanistan is now the only country in the world where girls cannot go to secondary school or higher education, with the only option available being madrasas that promote an extreme interpretation of Islam. The Malala Fund continues to do what it can. \u201cWe are providing funding for alternative education right now,\u201d she says. \u201cThere are underground schools, there are radio and television education programmes.\u201d<\/p>\n Yousafzai is heartbroken at what has come to pass. \u201cI feel the world has forgotten about the women in Afghanistan,\u201d she says. What stings is that \u201cpeople were willing to trust the Taliban more than Afghan women\u201d. Which people, I ask? \u201cWorld leaders,\u201d she says, \u201cdecision makers.\u201d<\/p>\n Yousafzai writes of emailing politicians, begging for their assistance in evacuating her Afghan partners to safety before the Taliban took over. \u201cFor years, I\u2019d\u00a0smiled in pictures with these leaders, shaken their hands and stood next to them at podiums \u2013 but not one of them picked up the phone, or replied to my messages. To the men who ran the world, I was just a photo op.\u201d<\/p>\n Who didn\u2019t take her calls? She mentions Biden. Johnson. Macron. Trudeau. She notes, pointedly, that female politicians did. Erna Solberg, the then Norwegian prime minister, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Lolwah Al-Khater, assistant foreign minister of Qatar at the time, stepped in to help evacuate her Afghan partners to safe countries, in some instances without passports.<\/p>\n For many years, Yousafzai pioneered a model of professional activism: cautious, consensus-driven, willing to work with institutions, rather than calling them out; one that used the photo op and the handshake, rather than the megaphone and the protest. Her detractors said she was too corporate, but Yousafzai sincerely believed it was better to work with people and make incremental change. And then Afghanistan happened. Did she feel duped?<\/p>\n <\/span>Yousafzai at the White House with Barack and Michelle Obama and their daughter Malia in 2013.<\/span> Photograph: Hum Images\/ Universal Images Group\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cI do feel like I\u2019m more cynical,\u201d she says. \u201cBut, at the same time, I do my work. I know that optimism is the only way you can keep going, because there\u2019s no other option.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a perception on social media that, as one of the most prominent Muslim activists in the world today, Yousafzai has not done enough to speak out on Gaza. This perception is not entirely fair. Through the Malala Fund, and personally, Yousafzai has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to organisations that support children and schools in Gaza. She first called for a ceasefire on 10 October 2023.<\/p>\n Today, it is Yousafzai who brings up Gaza. \u201cIsrael has to stop this indiscriminate bombing,\u201d she says. Humanitarian aid must be allowed in, she adds, characterising the starvation of civilians as \u201cdeliberate\u201d. But, still, the perception lingers. Her critics, she says, \u201ccompletely are dismissing or ignoring the actual work that I\u2019m doing\u201d.<\/p>\n Yousafzai describes what is happening in Gaza as \u201ca genocide\u201d. \u201cYou look at the evidence, you look at what\u2019s happening, you look at how they\u2019re [the IDF] committing these actions, and it\u2019s very clear if they\u2019re targeting people for collecting aid, or getting water. Everyone knows children are unarmed.\u201d She also calls for the release of the surviving hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza in appalling conditions. \u201cI\u2019ve been very consistent in saying that the hostages should be freed \u2026 I don\u2019t believe in using violence for resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n Does she think she has done enough? \u201cI wish I lived in a world where I could do a tweet and the world would stop the war.\u201d After we meet, Yousafzai travels to Egypt to meet injured Palestinian child refugees, and announces a $100,000 grant from the Malala Fund to support their medical treatment and education.<\/p>\n \u201cThere isn\u2019t a night where I don\u2019t think about what I can do,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n T<\/span>hroughout the 2010s, Yousafzai was\u00a0the most prominent of a wave of child activists \u2013 such as the climate-change campaigners Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate, or gun-control advocate Emma <\/strong>Gonz\u00e1lez (now X Gonz\u00e1lez) \u2013 feted by world leaders, invited to events, on the covers of magazines, writing bestselling memoirs, delivering speeches to adoring audiences. This cultural moment has now passed. The celebrity activist feels like a relic of a different era. Many question what these activists achieved.<\/p>\n The Malala Fund supports girls\u2019 education projects in six countries. In order to maintain the funding streams, Yousafzai has to cultivate relationships with funders and world leaders, inevitably leading to accusations of selling out. Most of the people who slam her online will never achieve a fraction of what she has done for girls around the world. But it can at times be jarring to see Yousafzai enjoying an international jet-set lifestyle \u2013 days out at Formula One and at Taylor Swift concerts \u2013 interspersed with posts about Gaza or the plight of Afghan girls.<\/p>\n She is often compared unfavourably by her critics, particularly those on the left, with Thunberg, who is willing to put herself in physical danger, boarding the Freedom Flotilla and setting sail for Gaza. \u201cI really look up to Greta,\u201d says Yousafzai, adding she checked in with her after she was detained by Israeli authorities.<\/p>\n In April 2024, Yousafzai attended the opening night of Suffs, a Broadway musical about the suffragettes\u00a0that\u00a0she executive produced. Also in attendance was Hillary Clinton, a fellow executive producer. Online commentators flamed Yousafzai for\u00a0being associated with the hawkish former secretary\u00a0of state. In reality, Yousafzai says, she didn\u2019t\u00a0realise that Clinton was an\u00a0executive producer on the project until after she had been brought on, and\u00a0they did not work together on it.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople say, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re at the Suffs premiere, you are an executive producer, oh, Hillary Clinton has these views, therefore you support these views, therefore you are also complicit.\u201d<\/p>\n Being photographed at the same star-studded premiere as Clinton, rightly or wrongly, reinforces a persistent criticism of Yousafzai in Pakistan: that she is in the pocket of western powers; there are even longstanding rumours that she is an intelligence asset.\u00a0When I ask her about this, she pushes back. \u201cPakistan is a part of me,\u201d she says, \u201cand so I get defensive when I\u2019m asked this question. I say, no, no, no, Pakistan doesn\u2019t hate me.\u201d<\/p>\n She fears that by giving succour to the view that she is unpopular in Pakistan, she feeds into broader anti-Muslim sentiment: the idea that Pakistan is a\u00a0country full of backwards people who instinctively hate educated women. \u201cI believe,\u201d she says, \u201cand it is deliberate, on my side, that I have a lot more love and support in Pakistan.\u201d But, equally, she says, \u201cI\u2019m not going to deny there isn\u2019t any hint [of hatred] at all. There is. There have been these campaigns from when I was, like, 12 years old.<\/p>\n \u201cThe criticism is not against me,\u201d she adds. \u201cIt\u2019s more criticism against the west, criticism against these bigger narratives, and political conversations, but I am sort of attached to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, it\u2019s clear to see it wears on her. \u201cI do find it sad,\u201d she admits, \u201cthat I sometimes have to read everything 10 times before I post it, because I\u2019m, like, what is it that\u00a0will get people\u2019s attention?<\/p>\n It is difficult. I do wish for more freedom in expressing myself.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Yousafzai being presented with the United Nations Charter by the then UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon in 2013.<\/span> Photograph: Stan Honda\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n After I wrap up the section of the interview on politics, Yousafzai exhales with relief and stretches her arms out in front of her, as if we are colleagues who have just finished a difficult task and can now relax with a cup of tea and a biscuit. By contrast, when it comes to talking about her family and her relationship with Malik, she speaks freely, laughing often. She is happiest when talking about her plans for Recess, an investment fund with a focus on women\u2019s sports that she recently launched with Malik.<\/p>\n Recess isn\u2019t a non-profit, as I initially assumed. It\u2019s a business, with the aim of increasing participation in women\u2019s sports. Malik helped Yousafzai find her love of exercise. The fact that Malik is a cricket manager was part of his initial appeal, says the cricket-mad Yousafzai, even if her husband refuses to let her watch him play. \u201cHe says,\u201d Yousafzai says, with an eye roll, \u201c\u2018I used to work in cricket management<\/em>! I was not a professional cricketer!\u2019 I\u2019m, like, uh-huh. He did not explain that before marriage.\u201d She hopes that Recess will \u201ccreate more opportunities for women in sports\u201d and help women \u201cget a say in sports at all levels, whether that\u2019s from the field to the owner\u2019s box\u201d.<\/p>\n Before we leave, I ask Yousafzai if her parents have read Finding My Way. She says she has given them the gist of it, but they have not read it. \u201cI have told them, \u2018You will read it when it\u2019s released, and you can pick it up from any bookshelf in any bookstore, and feel free to read it, but then you cannot make any changes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n I understand the logic, familiar to many first- and second-generation immigrant children, including myself. Ask for forgiveness, not permission. But I\u2019m\u00a0also floored. Because Yousafzai is a global figure: the bong story will, inevitably, unleash a maelstrom of negative publicity back home.<\/p>\n She is ready. \u201cI am very prepared for that,\u201d Yousafzai says, absolutely calm. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to get defensive about it at all. I\u2019m not going to issue any statement. If anybody has any confusion, they can read my book and decide for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n It strikes me as I walk away from our interview that\u00a0she never chose any of this. To be shot as a child, to be airlifted to the UK, to win the Nobel peace prize. Yousafzai seems to be someone who consistently puts\u00a0others before herself, whether it\u2019s accommodating her parents\u2019 cultural expectations around marriage, supporting her family back home, or dedicating her life\u00a0to advancing girls\u2019 education. \u201cI\u2019m working so hard\u00a0to learn how to say no,\u201d she says, \u201cand to be more direct \u2026 I do sort of overthink about other people\u2019s feelings sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n If the story of her teens and early 20s was of service to others, her late 20s are about Yousafzai choosing happiness for herself. I think she deserves it.<\/p>\n Finding My Way by Malala Yousafzai is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on 21 October at \u00a325. To order a copy for \u00a322.50, go to guardian.bookshop.com<\/p>\n