http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/stoi/deep-focus/A-girls-daddy/articleshow/44873241.cms
A GIRL'S DADDY
When Ziauddin said he was lucky to be known by his daughter, he sent a message out to our son-obsessed subcontinent. Javed Anand salutes the man in a tribute inspired by 'I Am Malala'
The family is too poor to afford a hospital so she is born at home in Mingora, the biggest town in Pakistan's breathtakingly beautiful Swat Valley. Her mother, Tor Pekai, is anxious about how her husband, Ziauddin Yousafzai, might respond to the arrival of a girl in their cultural milieu where the birth of a son is celebrated while that of a daughter treated as tragedy.
But the moment Ziauddin looks into his daughter's eyes it is love at first sight. "I know there is something different about this child," he exults, and insists that his friends throw dry fruits, sweets and coins in her cradle. That's how Pashtuns normally greet the arrival of a baby boy.
Is it something that he sees in the newborn's eyes or the projection of his dreams that prompts Ziauddin to name her Malala, invoking the memory of the Pashtun's own Joan of Arc, Malalai of Maiwand. The world would know her as Malala. But for her 'Abba' she will always be 'Jaane-man' (soulmate, sweetheart, heart throb) or simply 'Jaani'. To her mother, Tor Pekai, she will be 'Pisho' (cat).
Two years later, the mother is overjoyed when her darling ('laadla') boy is born. Money is in short supply but she is keen on a new cradle for her son. No way, says Ziauddin: "Malala swung in that cradle (a second-hand one borrowed from neighbours); so can he."
As a child, Malala plays cricket with her younger brother and other boys in the neighbourhood. But she knows that soon the boys will be free to roam around town while she will be constrained like other Pashtun women. That's not how she'd like to live her life. Thankfully there's Abba: "Malala will be free as a bird."
Before his marriage and Malala, Ziauddin had begged and borrowed to start an English-medium school of his own because he believed that lack of education was the root cause of all Pakistan's problems. What's more he also believed that schools are meant to encourage not blind obedience but independent thought, open-mindedness and creativity.
As she grows up, Malala begins to blossom along with other girls and boys in Abba's dream 'Khushal School' in Mingora. But suddenly the Taliban spill over into the Swat Valley from neighbouring Afghanistan with their version of Islam that is hostile to music, cinema, arts, sports, culture; above all to women and women's education, not even in madrasas. For the Talibani mullahs, Khushal School is "a centre of vulgarity and obscenity and they take girls for picnics to different resorts".
Ziauddin of course has a different take on this: "You (girls) have a right to enjoy greenery and waterfalls and landscape just as boys do".
Before long, Swat's Muslims are either swayed by Talebani Islam or so terrified with the bombings of schools and the beheadings as to turn into mute witnesses. Ziauddin is among those who would not be cowed down.
When in 2008, Swat's elders launch a 'Qaumi Jirga' to challenge the Taliban, the not-so-elderly Ziauddin is elected its spokesperson. Not only does he speak out, he even encourages his 11-year-old daughter to do the same. "There's a fear in my heart," she says in a documentary on her by the New York Times and proceeds to assert, "They cannot stop me. I'll get my education if it's at home, school or somewhere else".
Neither the killing of jirga members one by one, nor the death threats deter Ziauddin. What does frighten him, however, is when in 2012 the Pakistani Taliban declare their intent to kill Malala. Until then it was generally believed that "even the Taliban do not target young girls". But now?
"Maybe we should stop our campaigning, Jaani, and go into hibernation for a while," he tells Malala. Only to hear this from his teenaged comrade-in-arms: "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." Months later, while returning home in the school bus, she is shot in the head. Fortunately, she survives the close brush with death.
In 2012, shortly before they learnt of the threat to her life, Ziauddin and Malala were at the sea shore in Karachi watching the waves roll by. "You are a million miles away, Jaani. What are you dreaming about?" the father asked. "Just about crossing oceans, Abba", she replied.
Now that she is a Nobel laureate, a household word across the globe, perhaps there are no oceans left for Malala to cross. The only difficult journey is the one that would take her where she and her family long to return: the as yet Taliban-infested Swat Valley.
But let the closing words be from her Abba. In France to collect an award for his Jaani, this is what he had said: "In my part of the world most people are known by their sons. I am one of the few lucky fathers known by his daughter".
In her book I am Malala, she talks of how odd her Abba must feel in the altered reality: "I used to be known as his daughter; now he's known as my father." Perhaps there's a message here for all fathers in our son-obsessed subcontinent.
Were you to rejoice when your daughter is born, like Ziauddin you too may one day experience the sheer joy of being known as your daughter's father.
The writer is a Mumbai-based civil rights activist
The family is too poor to afford a hospital so she is born at home in Mingora, the biggest town in Pakistan's breathtakingly beautiful Swat Valley. Her mother, Tor Pekai, is anxious about how her husband, Ziauddin Yousafzai, might respond to the arrival of a girl in their cultural milieu where the birth of a son is celebrated while that of a daughter treated as tragedy.
But the moment Ziauddin looks into his daughter's eyes it is love at first sight. "I know there is something different about this child," he exults, and insists that his friends throw dry fruits, sweets and coins in her cradle. That's how Pashtuns normally greet the arrival of a baby boy.
Is it something that he sees in the newborn's eyes or the projection of his dreams that prompts Ziauddin to name her Malala, invoking the memory of the Pashtun's own Joan of Arc, Malalai of Maiwand. The world would know her as Malala. But for her 'Abba' she will always be 'Jaane-man' (soulmate, sweetheart, heart throb) or simply 'Jaani'. To her mother, Tor Pekai, she will be 'Pisho' (cat).
Two years later, the mother is overjoyed when her darling ('laadla') boy is born. Money is in short supply but she is keen on a new cradle for her son. No way, says Ziauddin: "Malala swung in that cradle (a second-hand one borrowed from neighbours); so can he."
As a child, Malala plays cricket with her younger brother and other boys in the neighbourhood. But she knows that soon the boys will be free to roam around town while she will be constrained like other Pashtun women. That's not how she'd like to live her life. Thankfully there's Abba: "Malala will be free as a bird."
Before his marriage and Malala, Ziauddin had begged and borrowed to start an English-medium school of his own because he believed that lack of education was the root cause of all Pakistan's problems. What's more he also believed that schools are meant to encourage not blind obedience but independent thought, open-mindedness and creativity.
As she grows up, Malala begins to blossom along with other girls and boys in Abba's dream 'Khushal School' in Mingora. But suddenly the Taliban spill over into the Swat Valley from neighbouring Afghanistan with their version of Islam that is hostile to music, cinema, arts, sports, culture; above all to women and women's education, not even in madrasas. For the Talibani mullahs, Khushal School is "a centre of vulgarity and obscenity and they take girls for picnics to different resorts".
Ziauddin of course has a different take on this: "You (girls) have a right to enjoy greenery and waterfalls and landscape just as boys do".
Before long, Swat's Muslims are either swayed by Talebani Islam or so terrified with the bombings of schools and the beheadings as to turn into mute witnesses. Ziauddin is among those who would not be cowed down.
When in 2008, Swat's elders launch a 'Qaumi Jirga' to challenge the Taliban, the not-so-elderly Ziauddin is elected its spokesperson. Not only does he speak out, he even encourages his 11-year-old daughter to do the same. "There's a fear in my heart," she says in a documentary on her by the New York Times and proceeds to assert, "They cannot stop me. I'll get my education if it's at home, school or somewhere else".
Neither the killing of jirga members one by one, nor the death threats deter Ziauddin. What does frighten him, however, is when in 2012 the Pakistani Taliban declare their intent to kill Malala. Until then it was generally believed that "even the Taliban do not target young girls". But now?
"Maybe we should stop our campaigning, Jaani, and go into hibernation for a while," he tells Malala. Only to hear this from his teenaged comrade-in-arms: "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." Months later, while returning home in the school bus, she is shot in the head. Fortunately, she survives the close brush with death.
In 2012, shortly before they learnt of the threat to her life, Ziauddin and Malala were at the sea shore in Karachi watching the waves roll by. "You are a million miles away, Jaani. What are you dreaming about?" the father asked. "Just about crossing oceans, Abba", she replied.
Now that she is a Nobel laureate, a household word across the globe, perhaps there are no oceans left for Malala to cross. The only difficult journey is the one that would take her where she and her family long to return: the as yet Taliban-infested Swat Valley.
But let the closing words be from her Abba. In France to collect an award for his Jaani, this is what he had said: "In my part of the world most people are known by their sons. I am one of the few lucky fathers known by his daughter".
In her book I am Malala, she talks of how odd her Abba must feel in the altered reality: "I used to be known as his daughter; now he's known as my father." Perhaps there's a message here for all fathers in our son-obsessed subcontinent.
Were you to rejoice when your daughter is born, like Ziauddin you too may one day experience the sheer joy of being known as your daughter's father.
The writer is a Mumbai-based civil rights activist
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