Bloody but unbowed, Malala is Invictus

There was a newspaper cartoon that depicted a woman in a burka in the driver’s seat, except the car that she was in was remotely operated. The remote control was firmly in a snarky man’s hands. Muslim majority countries run by men, fueled by a toxic mix of patriarchy and abuse of power, have now come to the realization that women should be thrown a bone. But no one appreciates a woman driving off on her own, engine running on something the menfolk cannot control. 

Women can have the semblance of liberation but real freedom is not negotiable. This is why, in Pakistan, when Malala Yousufzai runs off in the driver’s seat demanding rights for women and girls to have an education on their own terms, it is terribly jarring. No one can find the remote control. 

Now Malala is back in Pakistan after being shot in the face by the Taliban five years ago. She is termed the most famous and popular Pakistani by none other than the prime minister, Shahid Khakhan Abbasi. She has been given the highest honor: A state welcome, well deserved for someone who left bloodied and stretcher-borne and returned with a Nobel Peace Prize and a whole load of dare. 

In Pashtun culture, particularly in Swat, where she is from, girls are as good as their ability to adopt silence and cloak their bodies in invisibility. The men in a woman’s family see to it that they are good. However, Malala’s father Ziauddin has refused to adopt this social construct and refused to “clip her wings.” So now, left with no recourse to co-opt her male family members into erasing her, the malign powers look for control in other ways: Shaming her as a foreign agent on the payroll of an Islamophobic CIA; as a hypocrite because she left behind others who have faced a similar fate; as a stooge of the West providing fodder to air Pakistan’s dirty laundry; and also the victim of exploitation by an unscrupulous father. The latter was a statement made by politician Zahid Hamid, who can best be described as an overgrown adolescent fulfilling his militaristic urges by turning to violent evangelism.

Malala’s character assassination has been vile and vast. It has not been limited by age or educational exposure — even those with an expansive world view see her as a threat to their value system. Yet she adopts what is her culture so effortlessly. With the dupatta (shawl) always on her head and a polite disposition, she shows a tremendous love and affection for what she calls “her people.” 

So the discomfort that Pakistan’s Malala hate club feels cannot be because she demands rights for girls. They apparently want that too. The issue is that she didn’t check with them first if it was OK for her to venture into the world and out-Anne Frank Anne Frank, out-Justin Bieber Justin Bieber and outdo the concept of the quintessential demure Pakistani girl. No one who doesn’t live under a rock will ever see Pakistani women as anything but bold, feisty, incredibly articulate and untamable. The soil of Swat, bubbling over with conservatism, produced this incredible girl. 

When shame is thrust on women, the first casualty is their sense of self-worth. The second is their voice. The third is their mobility. Women in conservative societies become small, like touch-me-nots after they are touched — nature shrivels them to protect them from an onslaught of hate and malice, which in Malala’s case was a bullet to the head. Malala didn’t compromise on any of these three. She didn’t when she was 13 — writing her diary and hurling weapons of ideas against Mullah Fazlullah (“Mullah Radio”) — and she doesn’t now despite the harassment she receives, which is perhaps worse even than Monica Lewinsky suffered. 

She stayed resolute even when she was the subject of a false blasphemy campaign to link her with the phobic hate that Salman Rushdie faced. Even when she was targeted though a private school campaign in Punjab called “I am not Malala,” when teachers and students were encouraged to wear black armbands to protest against her trip home and her bid to bring about more education for girls. And even when the undeniable bullet she took in her head was called “staged” by a TV commentator, Orya Maqbool Jan. 

Even then her response was to keep driving; belted for safety, hands on the wheel, and refusing to hand over the remote control to any dirty old man of Pakistan. 

Such poise is not just rare, it’s non-existent. It is Invictus: The poem William Henley wrote that inspired Nelson Mandela during his South African prison term. She is “bloody but unbowed.” In her speech, publicly crying for the first time, she said in a deeply human moment: “I am just 20 years old, but I have seen a lot in life.” What we have subjected on this mere child, now a young woman, is metaphorically heavy. Let’s finally spare her now.  

— Aisha Sarwari is co-founder of the Women’s Advancement Hub, a grassroots platform for women to amplify their voices. She has been working on women’s rights for more than 15 years in Pakistan. Twitter: @AishaFSarwari