A Death Threat Against Me PDF

# 20 A Death Threat against Me One day in early 2012, we were in Karachi as guests of GEO TV, and a Pakistani journalist who lived in Alaska came to see us; she had seen the New York Times video and wanted to meet me. She also wanted to take my father aside to tell him something. I noticed that s...

# 20 A Death Threat against Me One day in early 2012, we were in Karachi as guests of GEO TV, and a Pakistani journalist who lived in Alaska came to see us; she had seen the New York Times video and wanted to meet me. She also wanted to take my father aside to tell him something. I noticed that she had tears in her eyes; then she and my father walked over to the computer. They looked troubled and hurriedly shut down whatever they'd been looking at. A short while later, my father's phone rang. He took the call out of earshot and came back inside looking very gray, "What is it?" I asked. "There's something you're not telling me." He had always treated me as an equal, but I could see he was trying to decide whether to protect me from this thing or to share it with me. He sighed heavily, then showed me what he'd been looking at on the computer. He Googled my name. Malala Yousafzai, the Taliban said "should be killed." There it was in black and white. A death threat against me, I think I had known this moment might come someday now here it was. I thought back to those mornings in 2009, when school first reopened and I had to walk to school with my books hidden under my scarf. I was so nervous in those days. But I had changed since then. I was three years older now. I had traveled and given speeches and won awards. Here was a call for my death—an invitation from one terrorist to another, saying, “Go ahead, shoot her”—and I was as calm as could be. It was as if I were reading about someone else. I took another glance at the message on the screen. Then I closed the computer and never looked at those words again. The worst had happened. I had been targeted by the Taliban. Now I would get back to doing what I was meant to do. I might have been calm, but my dear father was near tears. "Are you all right, jani?” he said. “Aba,” I said, trying to reassure him. “Everybody knows they will die someday. No one can stop death. It doesn't matter if it comes from a Talib or from cancer.” He wasn't convinced. “Maybe we should stop our campaigning for a while,” he said. “Maybe we should go into hibernation for a time.” My proud, fearless Pashtun father was shaken in a way I'd never seen. And I knew why. It was one thing for him to be a target of the Taliban. He had always said, "Let them kill me. I will die for what I believe in." But he had never imagined the Taliban would turn their wrath on a child. On me. I looked at my father's wretched face, and I knew that he would honor my wishes no matter what I decided. But there was no decision to make. This was my calling. Some powerful force had come to dwell inside me, something bigger and stronger than me, and it had made me fearless. Now it was up to me to give my father a dose of the courage he had always given me. “Aba," I said. “You were the one who said if we believe in something greater than our lives, then our voices will only multiply, even if we are dead. We can't stop now." He understood, but he said we should be careful about what we say and to whom we say it. On the trip back home, though, I asked myself what I would do if a Talib came to kill me. Well, I would just take my shoe and hit him. But then I thought: If you hit a Talib with your shoe, there is no difference between him and you. You must not treat others with cruelty. You must fight them with peace and dialogue. “Malala,” I said to myself. "Just tell him what is in your heart. That you want an education. For yourself. For all girls. For his sister, his daughter. For him.” That's what I would do. Then I would say, "Now you can do what you want."