Malala Yousafzai has never watched a football game and will gladly start with the Eagles

When Malala Yousafzai hit world headlines in 2012, she was 15 and lying comatose in a hospital in Birmingham, England. She had been shot in the head by Taliban militants while on her way back from school after an exam, in Pakistan’s Swat Valley.

“I was getting defined as a brave, courageous activist, a girl who stood up to the Taliban and fighting for girls’ education. But I had still not opened my eyes and figured out what had happened, where I was supposed to now live and restart my life,” said Yousafzai, 28, whose new memoir, Finding My Way, came out this month.

The book begins with the words, “I’ll never know who I was supposed to be.”

She thinks about that often.

“Maybe I would have lived a life where I felt less pressure and didn’t have to meet so many expectations. But then, I would be facing so many challenges in my own education, let alone fighting for other girls.”

Earlier this year, the first class of girls graduated from the high school she started in her native village of Mingora. “The first class in the whole village,” she asserted, breaking into a smile on Zoom.

Delightfully candid, the memoir speaks of Yousafzai’s high school years in Birmingham. She struggled to make friends. “By the end of it, I had only made one friend,” she said.

Apparently, a Nobel Peace Prize doesn’t make you cool enough. “Not with friendships anyway,” she said. “Maybe the work you want to do for girls’ education, but not with making friends.”

The memoir details her college years in Oxford, where she nursed heartbreaks, smoked weed, met Asser Malik whom she’d eventually marry, and, yes, made friends.

As one reads on, the eternal image of the 15-year-old in a veil splashed across TV screens and newspapers, slowly begins to shift. Yousafzai has stepped into womanhood, and she has embraced all the heartbreak and hormones that come with it and is not ashamed to talk about it.

“In a way, this is a reintroduction of me,” said the author. “I have talked about my love life, friendships, and mental health. It’s been a wild ride from nearly failing my exams to getting ghosted by my crush, to reconnecting with my mission of educating girls.”

For someone who won a Nobel at 17, topped school in Pakistan, and became a beacon of hope for girls who dream of getting an education, talking about almost failing in college wasn’t easy.

“I realized that I cannot miss this opportunity to prioritize making friends,” she said, recalling sitting in the library and looking outside to see friends sitting in the sun and laughing.

“I realized I wanted to be with them more than anything … It’s not just about having fun and socializing. I think learning from people can be life-changing, and it can stay with you forever.”

At Oxford, she attended Lady Margaret Hall, studied philosophy, politics, and economics, took up rowing, joined every society that she could find, organized social events, and attended parties.

It’s also where, in the summer of 2018, she met Malik through mutual friends and bonded over a shared love for cricket.

After a string of secret dates, a desire to never get married, and an eventual change of heart, she decided to tell her parents.

She first told her forever cheerleader and father, Ziauddin, who was a schoolteacher back home in Pakistan, and asked him not to tell her mother, Toor Pekai, just yet.

“Because I knew she would freak out.”

Her father, she said, “took no pause and called my mom. I was like, ‘Dad, how could you do this?’ And then my mom told me off.” It felt like a betrayal. But eventually, “after all of that hide and seek, they finally approved us.”

“I love my mom,” said Yousafzai. “Her upbringing, childhood, and experiences were so different from mine. I understand her fears, and that she wants to protect me. We constantly have these conversations. I keep telling her that we have to resist these pressures, so we can make it comfortable for more girls to be able to express themselves.”

Toor Pekai, her daughter says, is “a work in progress.”

“She just started reading the book. So we’ll find out how much more work needs to be done on her,” Yousafzai said with a laugh.

She and Malik were married in 2021, but it wasn’t an obvious decision just because they had dated for a while. Yousafzai, running schools for girls in Pakistan and Lebanon, wondered if “embracing love and taking a big decision like marriage” would take away from everything she had achieved.

“I had so many questions and doubts about marriage. We all know the issue of forced marriages and child marriage. We also know how, historically, marriage has meant more compromises for women. So I took my time, I did my research, I learned, and more than anything, I asked Asser questions.”

One of them was, “What if I earn more than you?”

“He would say something like, ‘If my wife earns more than me, I’ll be the luckiest husband, and I would love to just sit at home and enjoy my life.’ So I was like, ‘Wow, this guy is funny as well.’”

“We need better men, better boys,” said Yousafzai.

Which she said, makes her Team Conrad, referring to the Prime Video show The Summer I Turned Pretty that she binge-watched with Malik.

For someone who was forced out of her home country, she has now learned to find a sense of belonging. “It is the home that we have in Birmingham now, where my family lives. It is when I’m with my friends, or when I’m with my husband, and we have a moment of joy together. It’s when we’re watching our favorite TV show, or holding hands. All of that is now home to me.”

Her book tour brings her to Philadelphia on Tuesday, where she’ll be in conversation with Kylie Kelce.

“I’m really excited to be in Philadelphia,” said the cricket fan, “and open to going to an Eagles game. I don’t think I’ve been to any of the games.

“What is it called? American football?”

“Malala Yousafzai: Finding My Way Book Tour,” Oct. 28, 8 p.m., the Fillmore, 29 E. Allen St., Phila., livenation.com