Nobel laureate and the star next door, Malala Yousafzai recently divulged details in an exclusive interview about how her family occasionally receives marriage proposals through email from Pakistan for her.
“The boy says that he has many acres of land and many houses and would love to marry me,” she says, amused. She reveals her parents also had an arranged marriage and how her mother pursues the topic time and again. “You have to get married, marriage is beautiful,’” she says.
The young human rights advocate who featured on the cover of British Vogue‘s June edition, further spilled the beans on female education, love for comedies, her favourite meal from McDonalds and much more.
Malala – who has completed her philosophy, politics and economics degree at Oxford University last year – shared that she enjoyed ‘each and every moment’ at the university including visiting McDonald’s and playing poker with friends.
As a teenager newly arrived in England, she had been lonely, struggling to find her footing at Edgbaston High School for Girls in Birmingham. “People would ask me things like, ‘What was it like when you met Emma Watson or Angelina Jolie or Obama?’” Malala recalls. “And I wouldn’t know what to say. It’s awkward, because you want to leave the ‘Malala’ outside the school building; you want to just be a student and a friend.”
Just like every other graduate at the crossroads, the Oxford graduate discloses how the routine existential crisis hits her time and again now.
“I’m sitting in bed, scrolling through my private Instagram, thinking, ‘What am I doing?’”. Should she take on a gap year, start working, travel abroad or apply for a master’s programme? All these questions hit her at 2:00 AM, she adds.
Malala’s friendship with 18-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg and 21-year-old gun control campaigner Emma González is also discussed on a lighter note. Both text her for advice on which she proudly says “I know the power that a young girl carries in her heart when she has a vision and a mission,”.
Malala has significant achievements to her credit. Her autobiography, I Am Malala, published in 2013, became an international bestseller while she launched Malala Fund in 2015 for female education and rights.
She has recently donated $100,000 to ‘Save the Children’, $25,000 to KinderUSA and $25,000 to DCI Palestine to support families in Gaza for their rehabilitation.