50 Fun Facts About I Am Malala

The title I Am Malala answers a question shouted aboard a school bus in October 2012 by whom?

A young gunman stopped the bus, asked for Malala by name and fired three shots. Her answer to the world, a year later, became the title of her memoir.

What does the Pashto name Malala mean, a legacy of the folk heroine Malalai who died in battle?

Grief-stricken is what Malala means in Pashto. Her namesake, Malalai of Maiwand, is said to have raised the flag when its bearer fell in an 1880 battle in Afghanistan.

Which award did the audiobook of I Am Malala, narrated by Neela Vaswani, win in 2015?

A Grammy for Best Children's Album went to the recording in 2015. The winner was the young readers edition of the memoir, not the original adult book.

Which career did young Malala dream of before her father encouraged her to go into politics instead?

Doctor was the ambition she named in early interviews. In the summer of 2009, while her family was displaced by fighting in Swat, she resolved to become a politician instead.

To which young writer did former US first lady Laura Bush compare Malala in a 2012 newspaper article?

Anne Frank was already familiar to Malala: the BBC correspondent who asked her to keep a diary of life under the Taliban had told her about the girl's wartime journal.

Which pop star dedicated a song to Malala on stage in Los Angeles on the very day of the 2012 shooting?

Madonna dedicated her song Human Nature to Malala that night. She performed with a temporary tattoo of the name Malala on her back.

Which Hollywood actress made the first donation to the Malala Fund, giving $200,000 for girls' schooling in Swat?

Angelina Jolie gave the money in 2013. She had earlier written an article about how she explained the shooting to her own children.

Whose shawl did Malala wear to address the United Nations in 2013, honouring a murdered role model?

Benazir Bhutto, twice prime minister of Pakistan, was assassinated in Rawalpindi in December 2007. Malala, then ten, writes that if Benazir could die, no one was safe.

In which English city did Malala wake from a coma a week after the shooting, and later settle with her family?

Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital houses the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, which treats military personnel injured in conflict zones.

Which Sunday Times foreign correspondent co-wrote the memoir I Am Malala with Malala Yousafzai?

Christina Lamb began reporting on Pakistan and Afghanistan in the late 1980s. The book they wrote together was named Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year at Britain's National Book Awards in 2013.

What is the name of Malala's mother, who was learning to read at the time of the 2012 shooting?

Toor Pekai sold her schoolbooks for sweets as a small girl and stayed at home. She regretted it only after meeting Malala's father, a highly educated man.

After which 17th-century Pashtun warrior-poet did Malala's father name the school he founded in Swat?

Khushal Khattak spent his last years urging the Pashtun tribes to unite against the Mughal Empire. He is regarded as the father of Pashto literature.

Which difficulty did Malala's father Ziauddin overcome as a boy to win a public speaking competition?

A stutter troubled Ziauddin from childhood, yet he took first prize with a speech that his own father, a celebrated orator, had written for him.

Which bird gave Malala's father his nickname Shaheen, a name his own father bestowed after a contest win?

Falcon is the meaning of shaheen, chosen because the bird flies above all others. His father, Rohul Amin, was a theology teacher and the local imam.

Which classmate, Malala's best friend, beat her into second place in a school public speaking contest?

Moniba won that contest, whose set topic was honesty. Malala had entered it to make her parents proud again after she was caught taking a neighbour's belongings.

In which city, the largest in Pakistan's Swat Valley, was Malala Yousafzai born in 1997 and raised?

Mingora is where her father ran his school. Malala was born at home, with neighbours helping, because the family could not afford a hospital birth.

In Part One of I Am Malala, who campaigns to shut her father's school because it teaches girls?

An Islamic scholar, or mufti, told the building's owner the school was shameful and later brought a delegation of influential men. His campaign failed.

Where did Malala see the working children she begged her father to admit free to his school in Swat?

At a rubbish heap she saw children who lived and worked there. Her father was already giving away places at his school so that poor children could learn.

Which general, who seized power in a 1999 coup, rules Pakistan through Malala's childhood in I Am Malala?

Pervez Musharraf was the country's fourth military ruler, the memoir notes. After 9/11 he became an American ally, and in 2007 he sent troops into Swat against the Taliban.

Which Taliban leader in Swat, whose sermons open Part Two of I Am Malala, was nicknamed Radio Mullah?

Maulana Fazlullah preached over an illegal FM station, telling listeners to give up their televisions, DVDs and CDs. He was killed in Afghanistan in 2018.

Which health campaign did the Taliban halt in Swat during the Radio Mullah chapters of I Am Malala?

Polio vaccinations stopped as the movement tightened its grip. Its leader also set up a court, the shura, which ordered public whippings for everyday offences.

In Part Two of I Am Malala, the Taliban dynamite a giant ancient rock carving of which figure in Swat?

The Buddha at Jehanabad was damaged about the head by explosives in 2007. Italian archaeologists finished restoring it in 2016.

Which Islamabad landmark, held by armed militants and stormed by troops in 2007, features in Part Two of I Am Malala?

The Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, had been in conflict with the authorities for 18 months before the siege of July 2007. Afterwards, the memoir says, the militants declared war on the government.

What was the profession of Shabana, whose killing in a Swat square heralded Taliban rule in I Am Malala?

Dancer Shabana was well known in Pakistan. Bodies were later displayed each morning at the same crossroads, officially Green Square, which earned the name Bloody Square.

What title does I Am Malala give Part Two, the section covering the rise of the Taliban in Swat?

The Valley of Death opens with the Taliban arriving when Malala was ten. It closes in May 2009 with her family joining the exodus as the military moved in.

Under which pen name, borrowed from a Pashtun folk heroine, did Malala write her anonymous 2009 diary?

Gul Makai means cornflower in Pashto. The BBC editors insisted on a pseudonym because they feared for the 11-year-old's safety.

In which language did the BBC first publish the anonymous diary that 11-year-old Malala kept in early 2009?

Urdu was one of three languages Malala spoke fluently, with Pashto and English. Her first entry went up on the BBC Urdu website on 3 January 2009.

Which American newspaper sent Adam Ellick to film a 2009 documentary about Malala and her school in Swat?

The New York Times film brought Malala wider notice. A Stanford student who saw it, Shiza Shahid, sought out the family and later co-founded the Malala Fund.

How did Malala return to class in 2009 when the Taliban reopened school only for girls up to Year 4?

She pretended to be younger than she was, because Malala was in Year 5. The ban was eased after pressure that included a BBC correspondent's appeal to the Taliban leader.

To which mountain district, her father's birthplace, did Malala's family flee when fighting emptied Swat in 2009?

Shangla was home to the family's village, where Malala joined her cousins at the small local school. Her twelfth birthday passed unremarked during the months away.

Whose business card, given to Malala on a 2009 trip to Islamabad, later secured money to pay her father's teachers?

The army's spokesman, General Athar Abbas, had told the visiting schoolgirls to get in touch if they ever needed anything. The school had taken no fees during three months of exile.

Which natural disaster struck Swat around Malala's thirteenth birthday, as Part Three of I Am Malala recounts?

A flood after heavy monsoon rain wrecked the family's ancestral village. Across Pakistan the waters affected about 20 million people and roughly a fifth of the country's land.

In Part Three of I Am Malala, what does the teenage Malala pray for, hoping to seem more commanding as a speaker?

To grow taller was her wish because she felt a short girl carried less authority on a platform. She had been chosen as a speaker of Swat's District Child Assembly.

In which Pakistani city did US Navy SEALs kill Osama bin Laden in 2011, a raid recounted in I Am Malala?

Abbottabad had hidden him for years. The memoir describes Pakistanis' shame that he had lived in their country undetected, and their anger that the Americans had gone in alone.

Which Nobel laureate nominated Malala for the International Children's Peace Prize two years before she won it?

Desmond Tutu put her forward in 2011, making her the first Pakistani girl nominated. A South African teenager, Michaela Mycroft, won that year.

Whose mausoleum in Karachi does Malala visit in Part Three of I Am Malala, reflecting on the country he founded?

Muhammad Ali Jinnah lies in a white marble tomb completed in 1971. Malala was in Karachi in January 2012 because a school there was being renamed in her honour.

How did Malala begin travelling to school in 2012, instead of walking, because her mother feared for her safety?

By rickshaw she rode to school each morning. She came home on the school bus, and it was the bus that the attackers stopped on 9 October 2012.

Malala had just sat an exam paper in which school subject on the day she was shot in October 2012?

Pakistan Studies followed a physics paper the day before, and Malala had spent the night revising for it. The bus was stopped on her ride home.

To which city was the wounded Malala first flown by helicopter for emergency surgery in October 2012?

Peshawar's military hospital was where surgeons removed part of her skull to relieve the swelling in her brain. Days later she was moved to Rawalpindi.

Which Gulf state lent the plane that carried the wounded Malala from Pakistan to a hospital in England in 2012?

The UAE offered the jet after an American offer was turned down. Malala flew without her parents, who had to wait in Pakistan for travel documents.

Which sense did surgeons restore with an implant when they rebuilt Malala's skull in February 2013?

Hearing came back with a cochlear implant, fitted during the same five-hour operation. Earlier surgery, lasting eight and a half hours, had repaired a nerve in her face.

Which Pakistani president visited the recovering Malala in England and gave her father a diplomatic post in education?

Asif Ali Zardari told the family that the state would pay her medical bills. The post he gave her father allowed them all to remain in the UK.

Which former UK prime minister, a UN education envoy, launched a petition under the slogan I am Malala?

Gordon Brown launched it six days after the shooting. It called for every child in the world to be in school by the end of 2015.

Which American TV host told Malala he was humbled to speak with her when she promoted I Am Malala in 2013?

Jon Stewart welcomed her to The Daily Show on 8 October 2013, the day the book was published and the eve of the first anniversary of the shooting.

Which US military tactic in Pakistan did 16-year-old Malala challenge Barack Obama about in October 2013?

Drone strikes were the subject she raised with the president in the Oval Office. Her memoir dates the first such attacks on Pakistani soil to 2004.

Which European Parliament award for freedom of thought did Malala win days after I Am Malala was published?

Sakharov Prize winners are named each October by the parliament's leaders. The award honours Andrei Sakharov, the Russian scientist and dissident, and dates from 1988.

With which Indian campaigner against child labour did Malala share the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014?

Kailash Satyarthi and his organisation have freed tens of thousands of children in India from forced work and trafficking. At 17, Malala became the youngest person ever awarded a Nobel Prize.

Which American novelist, a National Book Award finalist for Sold, co-wrote the young readers edition of I Am Malala?

Patricia McCormick's version appeared in 2014 with a new subtitle, How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World.

Which magic object does young Malala wish for in the 2017 picture book she wrote for small children?

A pencil with magic powers belongs to the boy hero of Shaka Laka Boom Boom, the Indian TV series that inspired the book, Malala's Magic Pencil.

Which director of An Inconvenient Truth made the 2015 documentary He Named Me Malala about the Yousafzai family?

Davis Guggenheim took the title from Malalai of Maiwand, the folk heroine Malala's father named her after. The film was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.