One day I will go back to Pakistan: Malala

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One day I will go back to Pakistan: Malala
Nobel Peace Price Laureate Malala Yousafzai during media film screening and question and answer of 'HE NAMED ME MALALA' held at Emirates Hotel in Abu Dhabi, October 28, 2015.

Abu Dhabi - Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai in Abu Dhabi to promote movie, He Named Me Malala.

By David Light

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Published: Wed 28 Oct 2015, 11:00 PM

Last updated: Thu 29 Oct 2015, 9:20 PM

On October 9, 2012, right to education activist Malala Yousafzai, then just 15, took the school bus in her hometown of Mingora, Pakistan, for the last time. While busy chatting with friends on the journey, the vehicle was held up and a member of the incumbent Swat District arm of the Taliban forcibly boarded the vehicle and made an attempt on Yousafzai's life. Her crime: speaking out on behalf of girl's education. That was the last time she saw her homeland.
Fortunately the assassination attempt was unsuccessful in eliminating the now 18-year old United Kingdom-based activist and dampening her indelible dedication to advocating for a child's right to learn.
Yousafzai has arguably become the most influential teenager on earth. High-profile meetings with world leaders including Barack Obama, addressing the United Nations, a Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 (becoming the youngest ever recipient), a memoir and now movie suggest there aren't many who are not aware of this courageous young woman's story.
It was for the promotion of the movie, He Named Me Malala, produced by Image Nation Abu Dhabi, that Yousafzai found herself in the capital's Emirates Palace hotel on Wednesday morning - attending a select preview screening alongside father Ziauddin and director Davis Guggenheim.
"This is a personal movie," said Guggenheim of the film. "I was never going to make a geopolitical thing. It is the story of a girl and her father told through their interviews and points of view."
One of the overwhelming emotions Malala Yousafzai appears to convey throughout the 90-minute work is one of homesickness. Despite the ordeal she endured back in the Swat Valley and repeated threats by the Taliban to make another attempt if she ever returns, Yousafzai states in the film: "I just want to see my house once more."
Throughout the piece, while grateful for the rehabilitative and safe environment her adopted hometown of Birmingham, England, has provided - in a move which will resonate with teenagers everywhere - she laments having to go to a new school where she isn't sure fellow pupils quite understand her and the culture is far removed from that she is used to.
Yousafzai even goes as far as to say her time in the UK is transitional. "Three years have passed now," she said of leaving Pakistan after the movie was shown. "I haven't seen my country and I dream to go back." "I want to continue campaigning there and help every child get education...One day I will go back."
david@khaleejtimes.com


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