Passage 1:
WHEN I WAS born, people in our village sympathised with my mother and nobody
congratulated my father. I arrived at dawn as the last star blinked out. We Pashtuns see this as an
auspicious sign. My father didn't have any money for the hospital or for a midwife so a
neighbour helped at my birth. My parents' first child was stillborn but I popped out kicking and
screaming. I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are
hidden away behind a curtain, their role in life simply to prepare food and give birth to children.
For most Pashtuns it's a gloomy day when a daughter is born. My father's cousin Jehan Sher
Khan Yousafzai was one of the few who came to celebrate my birth and even gave a handsome
gift of money. Yet, he brought with him a vast family tree of our clan, the Dalokhel Yousafzai,
going right back to my great-great-grandfather and showing only the male line. My father,
Ziauddin, is different from most Pashtun men. He took the tree, drew a line like a lollipop from
his name and at the end of it he wrote, "Malala'. His cousin laughed in astonishment. My father
didn't care. He says he looked into my eyes after I was born and fell in love. He told people, 'I
know there is something different about this child.' He even asked friends to throw dried fruits,
sweets and coins into my cradle, something we usually only do for boys.
I was named after Malalai of Maiwand, the greatest heroine of Afghanistan. Pashtuns are a proud
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