MALALA YOUSAFZAI The long journey home

At 15, she was shot by the Taliban, at 17 she won the Nobel Peace Prize, at 22, she faced her inner demons, and now at 28, Malala Yousafzai bares her soul.

- SAMANTHA TRENOWETH

It was a little after 12 on a cold, clear December night, just a few months into Malala Yousafzai's first year at Oxford University. One of her new acquaintances had invited her to join him in “an experience that every Lady Margaret Hall student should try once”. They had made their way along dark corridors to a cramped prayer room and were now clambering out a tiny window onto a narrow ledge. Below them was “a multistorey drop to the cobblestone courtyard,” Malala remembers.

“When you get to the end, there’s a short jump to the next section of roof, only about three feet. You can easily make it – just don’t look down,” the third-year student advised. A blast of cold air hit Malala’s face as she jumped and “blood poured through my heart like a whirlpool”. She went on to scale the roof and ascend a precarious metal staircase to the top of a belltower, from where she could see all of Oxford laid out below.

This is one of many surprising revelations in her recent book, Finding My Way. Malala – who became an activist for girls’ education in Pakistan at 11, who was shot by the Taliban at 15, who spoke at the United Nations at 16, who became the world’s youngest Nobel laureate at 17 (sensible, studious, dedicated Malala) – is also a bit of a daredevil.

“The moment I jumped,” she writes, “I knew I would do it again and again.”

Eight years later, on a Zoom call from her London home, Malala – now 28, rosy cheeked, with a smile that lights up her eyes – is chatting with The Weekly about university. Fronting up at Oxford, determined to experience everything and to be treated like any other student, was in some ways the most courageous – certainly the most vulnerable – thing she had ever done.