Malala Yousafzai
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
I thought if this is something that puts me in the cool kids category or the rebellious kids category, I want to give it a try.
I wanted these college years to be that experience that I otherwise would never come across.
Suddenly, I was 15 years old again, lying on my back under a white sheet, a tube running down my throat, eyes closed.
For seven days, as doctors tended to my wounds, I was in a coma.
From the outside, I looked to be in a deep sleep, but inside, my mind was awake, and it played a slideshow of recent events.
My school bus, a man with a gun, blood everywhere.
My body carried through a crowded street.
Strangers hunched over me, yelling things I didn't understand, my father rushing toward the stretcher to take my hand.
As the images repeated in the same sequence over and over, I raged against them, trying to beat them away.
This isn't true, I told myself.
The real Malala is the one trapped in this nightmare, not the girl on the stretcher.
Just wake up, and it will stop.
Wake up.
I had tried to force my eyes open to see something other than this carousel of horrors.
Inside, I screamed.
Outside, my lips stayed closed, motionless.
I was awake and buried, alive in the coffin of my body.
The Bong incident, you know, just turned out to be an experience not that I had imagined.
I had heard cool things about it.
And of course, you know, like it's different for everybody.