'I THOUGHT NOTHING COULD SCARE ME'

Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai on bravery, breakthroughs, growing up, getting cynical - and the dramatic fallout from smoking a bong while at Oxford University.

- By Sirin Kale

I am at the shed where Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai smoked her first bong. No, there's no punchline - it's not that kind of anecdote. “My life has changed for ever,” Yousafzai says sadly, as we gaze at the semi-derelict structure. “Everything changed for ever, after that [night].” The shed is tucked away from the prying eyes of Oxford’s college life. 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.

We are meeting 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 - it’s the summer holidays - and Yousafzai attracts no attention from the few students who remain as she tramps across the grass.

This is not our first interview. Our last conversation sparked days of negative headlines for Yousafzai in her native Pakistan. I fear that round two may lead to more of the same. In 2021, I profiled a then-23-year-old Yousafzai for the cover of British Vogue. The world’s youngest Nobel laureate - she received the award at 17, for her activism for girls’ education - had recently graduated from university and was about to launch her adult life.

Yousafzai began campaigning at the age of 11. 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’ schools across Pakistan’s 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.