Malala Yousufzai

Malala has come to represent the will of a nation fighting to break the chains of slavery.

I have never met Malala, but I know the hurt it would cause me if something ever happened to my own 16-year old daughter. But Malala is not her parents’ daughter alone. She has come to reflect the hope, courage and aspirations of a whole nation that has been struggling incessantly to escape the endless alleys of darkness. There was such power and vigour in this 14-year-old innocent voice that even the bullet of a savage obscurantist animal fired from close range could not silence it. I know she’ll live. She’ll live to fight the harrowing shadows of evil that hover above us. She’ll live to fight the proponents of obscurantism and enslavement. She’ll live to guide this nation that has lost its courage and lives a demeaning existence devoid of hope.

When Swat was overrun by regressive marauders, Malala’s voice resonated through the hills and streams of the scenic valley, reflecting the inveterate resolve of a whole nation: “When I knew that they were burning our schools, I thought they were burning education, they were burning books. I have to be educated. I’ll be educated no matter what the odds.” No, I am not afraid, I am not afraid.”

Fear resides in the domain of the coward. Indeed, these perpetrators of violence are intent on destroying the avenues for our nation to escape the tentacles of captivity that have been their poor bounty for generations. Every evil coterie of slave traders is replaced by another that is even more evil and cruel. Such is the system that we have inherited and such are the devilish machinations that are so abundantly available to the practitioners of evil. Where are the champions of justice and the custodians of human rights? Where are the voices that stand for the supremacy of law? What of the promoters of a dialogue with these evil bands who could not tolerate little Malala’s drive for education?

The blood that stained Malals’s school-going clothes is the blood that stains the fate of this nation. To escape its consequences, everyone will have to show the resolve Malala showed when she took on the forces of repression, obscurantism, violence and depravity. They can no longer hide behind the veil of just extending vocal support. They need to play a role commensurate with the calling of the times — a role that will have to go beyond meaningless semantics. We have had enough of this evil duplicity. It has outlived its relevance and utility and will not work any longer.

Yesterday, it was Rimsha — a teenaged victim of Down Syndrome — who was wrongly accused of blasphemy because she is Christian. Today, it is Malala who championed against the forces of evil and darkness. There are also the 13 girls who have been reportedly sacrificed at the altar of the evil custom of Vani. There are innumerable Rimshas and Malalas whose voices are silenced without anyone ever knowing about them. How long are we going to allow this gory drama to play on, which is conceived and enacted by the very people who raise their voices against it in public, but behind closed doors, encourage these practices because it strengthens their criminal mafias? Their faces need to be unmasked and put before the court of the people they have wronged for generations.

Malala is alive as, indeed, she will always be. She has come to represent the will of a nation fighting to break the chains of slavery. She is leading the charge to move away decisively from decadent forces that represent the continued enslavement of thought and emotion. If Pakistan is to divorce from its sickening past and the repressive forces it has nurtured, it needs Malala Yousufzai and her resolute voice piercing the darkness that engulfs us.

Is it the scent of blood or the caress of the beloved’s lips?/ Behold, whence cometh the morning breeze/ Is spring in the air or the prison overflows again? Listen, whither cometh the sound of music — Faiz Ahmad Faiz

Published in The Express Tribune, October 16^th, 2012.