Just look at her now! It’s parties and takeaways for Oxford star Malala
SIX years ago she was close to death after being shot through the head by a Taliban fanatic.
But today Malala Yousafzai is enjoying polo matches, late night takeaways and listening to Beyonce as she embraces student life at Oxford.
Friends of the Pakistani women’s rights campaigner, 20, say she is throwing herself into undergraduate life.
Miss Yousafzai, who came to the UK after being shot in 2012, started at Lady Margaret Hall, or LMH, in October as a Philosophy, Politics and Economics student.
Since then she has enjoyed a life which is a world away from her native Pakistan, where she was targeted by the Taliban for campaigning for girls to be educated.
At LMH she’s been put in charge of college parties – with a friend saying she is ‘on the R&B vibe’. She has even appeared in student YouTube videos.
The constant presence of two armed plain-clothed Metropolitan Police officers, with one stationed in a room next to her in college, doesn’t seem to have curtailed her enjoyment of college life.
Her friend and fellow student Varaidzo Kativhu said: ‘Sometimes we stay up all night listening to Beyoncé and Rihanna and eating Indian takeaway.’
Another student added: ‘She is a fresher and gets treated like every other fresher here. People here respect her space. You have to earn your respect at LMH, even if you are one of the most famous young women in the world.’
Miss Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, attended a Christian Union party in her first week and beat older students at Scrabble. She also tried her hand at polo with a taster session at the university society.
She went on to join the cricket club and the University Pakistan Society, attending cinema nights and drama society productions.
She is also part of the 14-strong committee organising the Lady Margaret Hall Ball 2019 and has been elected social secretary in charge of college parties. The ‘bops’, as they are known, are famously drunken and debauched affairs and were suspended at LMH after a student urinated in the college library. They have since been reinstated. Miss Yousafzai, who doesn’t drink, was elected to the role two weeks ago along with fellow student Tiger Akawin. Their manifesto leaflet included lighthearted photographs of the pair posing together under the slogan, ‘bops to us is like sexiness to Justin Timberlake. We’re bringing it back’. A friend said: ‘She’s dealt with some of the most famous people on the planet and now has responsibility for college parties. We are expecting the good and the great at the bops.’
Friends have spoken of her popularity. ‘Malala has a really dry sense of humour and can take the mickey out of herself,’ one said. ‘She gets on with everyone.’
One of nine LMH students in her year reading PPE, she has won a reputation as a model student. ‘Her tutors have been impressed,’ another friend said. ‘She puts in the hard work and takes nothing for granted.’
Miss Yousafzai was attacked on a bus to school in Pakistan’s remote Swat region in October 2012. She was shot in the head and the bullet lodged near her spine. She was flown to Britain and treated at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.