LONDON: As she approached her final year at Oxford University, Malala Yousafzai grew a little sick of hiding her boyfriend. The youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize winner, known around the world by her first name since surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban at just 15, had fallen in love with a tall, handsome cricket manager named Asser Malik. But they kept their relationship under wraps — afraid, should a fan or photographer spot them, of spurring controversy in their native Pakistan — where such romances are not socially acceptable.
Then in the summer of 2019, Yousafzai decided to confide in her father, Ziauddin, the one person she felt she could tell anything. “I like him, Dad,” she said. If the seriousness of the romance was a surprise to her family, it was a surprise to her and Malik, too. “I never thought I would get married,” she tells a foreign media outlet. He adds: “You do not go in meeting Malala and think you’ll end up together.”
Now Yousafzai, 28, is nearly four years into marriage to Malik, 35, and they’re opening up about their partnership, both personal and professional. Earlier this year, the globetrotting education activist and bestselling author and her husband co-founded Recess Capital, which aims to increase women’s and girls’ access to sports.
Yousafzai also has a new memoir, ‘Finding My Way’, publishing Tuesday, Oct 21, which she calls her most personal yet. The book chronicles her connection with Malik, her ongoing recovery from being shot in the head in 2012 — including complex facial surgeries and treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety — as well as her emotional return in March to Shangla, Pakistan, where she helped open a school for girls and how she is charting her path into adulthood.
‘Finding My Way’ goes far beyond the headlines of her activism and her near-death. She explains: “I wanted to show more of myself.” But love was a teacher, too. “If you find the right person and you and your partner have mutual understanding about how this is going to be a journey together, and you will be looking after each other and making each other’s life happier than before,” she says, “it can work out really well.” Like many couples, Yousafzai and Malik slightly disagree about when they began dating.
She had feelings for him instantly. “My timeline starts in 2018, his probably starts in 2019,” she says with a laugh. The former is when they met while Malik visited friends at Oxford. Over the next year, they grew closer. They hung out together, alone, for the first time in the summer of 2018 after he asked her to show him around before he went back to Pakistan.
Within months, they were texting throughout the week, then calling. He shared more about his childhood, like how his dad, a banker with a gambling and alcohol addiction, had abandoned their family when he was a boy to escape his debtors; she called him when she smoked her first bong and was plagued by flashbacks and sleeplessness.
In July 2021, some two years into their long-distance courtship, Yousafzai and Malik met in Lake Placid, NY, to talk about the future. On the last day of their trip, 20 minutes before a car arrived to take them to the airport, she announced, “Okay, I think I’m ready.” He shook his head and smiled at her timing, waiting for her to say what she was thinking in full: “I’m ready to marry you.”
After Yousafzai graduated, with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics, they wed in a small Islamic ceremony in November 2021 at her parents’ home in Birmingham, England. (The family relocated there for safety after she was shot.)
When Yousafzai announced their nuptials online, Malik watched in amazement as his cellphone “buzzed itself to death,” he says. He’s helped her become more adventurous, she says, which is among the things she loves most about their relationship. She’s tried golfing, skiing and pickleball. Malik, a natural athlete and early riser, stressed to her the importance of sleeping and eating well and of being physically active.
Yousafzai worried if she focused on that, it would take away from her advocacy. He showed her otherwise. “I was so limited in my exposure,” she says, adding, “If he tells me it’s going to be fun, I trust him. Why don’t I give it a try?”
While some couples find it challenging to work together, she and Malik, who live in London, welcome it. Last month, they visited three countries, and they always try to take an evening off while away on business.
“We still call it our ‘honeymoon phase,’ even though it’s been four years,” Yousafzai says. They’ll be together throughout her book tour, which kicks off Tuesday, Oct 21 in New York.