Malala’s diary – La Verdad Juárez

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Reading these entries that Malala published makes me think about the consequences that writing leaves, about the power of words, a highly revealing but also threatening power. I also think about the value of the diary genre, an intimacy that portrays realities, frustrations, sorrows and fears, but also desires and even dreams.

By Évolet Aceves
X: @EvoletAceves

The Pakistani Malala Yousafzai, who was the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2014 and who, at just 17 years old, became the youngest recipient in the history of said prize, last Thursday, October 24, met with the president of Mexico , Claudia Sheinbaum, after the young woman attended the HABLA Summit, an event organized by the United Kingdom Embassy in Mexico, and after also visiting Frida Kahlo’s museum, the Blue House.

Malala received the Nobel Peace Prize for having defended the education of girls in her country, following the invasion of the Taliban – a fundamentalist Islamic group in Afghanistan – which increased restrictions on women when Malala was beginning puberty. At the age of fifteen, that attack occurred on the school bus where she was, an armed Taliban shot her with the purpose of killing her, because by then Malala had already begun to be recognized for her activism, she had appeared in a documentary of the New York Times speaking about the denial of girls’ right to education in their country, in addition to the fact that in the BBC He had begun to write, at the age of eleven and anonymously, diary entries in which he narrated the events he witnessed.

After reading the twenty-four entries published between January 3 and February 19, 2009, I notice the courage, the fear of the then teenager, when witnessing the events that happen around her, since shortly before Maulana Shah Dauran, cleric Taliban who announced the ban on girls attending schools, gave the order for said ban. I reproduce a fragment of the diary.

January 5, 2009: “I was getting ready for school and was about to put on my uniform when I remembered that our principal had told us that [las niñas] We didn’t wear uniforms and went to school in normal clothes. So I decided to wear my favorite pink dress. Other girls in the school also wore colorful dresses and the school had a homey look. […] During the morning assembly we were told not to wear colorful clothes because the Taliban would object.”

She talks about the colors of her favorite clothes, and the rejection of authority even over the colors of those clothes. By the way, since Malala became a public figure, she is almost always seen dressed in pink tones.

On February 12 he would write that the numerous suicides occur on Fridays, because “Islamic suicides think that dying on Friday satisfies God more.”

When reading the entries it is difficult not to relate it to the Cartridge by Nellie Campobello, and even more, with The Diary of Anne Frank.

On February 19, “I told my brothers that, from now on, we would not talk about war but about peace,” he said after hearing a fight between his parents when the mother disagreed with the father telling his children. of the murder of a journalist.

Likewise, Malala narrates the sadness and uncertainty with which she left school before the holidays, when the principal announced that the holidays were beginning, but never said when she would return, something that raised her suspicions. As he left, he turned to look at his school as if sensing that perhaps it would be the last time he would set foot there.

When reading these entries I start thinking about the consequences that writing leaves, about the power of words, a highly revealing but also threatening power. I also think about the value of the diary genre, an intimacy that portrays realities, frustrations, sorrows and fears, but also desires and even dreams, and that undoubtedly accounts for a precise time, of constant interaction with the world. The diary is not a minor genre.

Malala, on her visit to Mexico, was the one who was interested in seeing Claudia Sheinbaum. When they managed to meet, both showed their mutual admiration. Sheinbaum, a defender of gender equality and support for women, in previous days, during her surprise visit to the high school in Papalotla, in the State of Mexico, emphasized in her speech the same thing that she would say in the brief recording of the conversation she had with Malala and that circulates on networks: “women can be whatever we want to be. Let young girls know that they can be mathematicians, they can be firefighters, engineers, they can be whatever they want.”

Also in that surprise visit, as a parenthesis, he said something that I have always agreed with, and that seems invaluable to me, which is why I bring it up now: “Don’t tell us that public school is less than private school. It isn’t true. The public schools are the best in the entire country.” Not even water!

And another parenthesis that, I want to think, he even said to Malala, and that he also said on his express visit: “Children and adolescents for us are not the future of Mexico, they are the present. Education is a right of the people of Mexico, it is not a commodity, it is not a privilege. It is a right.” So forceful and precise.

Wow, not even a month has passed since he became president, and this meeting between Claudia Sheinbaum and Malala Yousafzai has meant a lot. When was the last time a president of Mexico met with a Nobel Peace Prize winner? As far as I understand, this was the first time. Both women have emphasized the importance of women’s education in society.

(The fragments cited were extracted from translated by me from English to Spanish.)