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she diplomatically told her father that she, not he, was the person to solve the problem — an uncommon act that defies Pakistani familial tradition. As he walked away, she offered me a smirk of confidence.

She hosted foreign diplomats in Swat, held news conferences on peace and education, and as a result, won a host of peace awards. Her best work, however, was that she kept going to school.

The Malala I know transformed with age from an obedient, rather shy 11-year-old into a publicly fearless teenager consumed with taking her activism to new heights. Her father’s personal crusade to restore female education seemed contagious.

Malala beamed as I pressed her father to treat his wife as an equal. Sometimes I felt like her de-facto uncle. I could tell her father the things she couldn’t.

I was enamored by Malala’s presence ever since that sentence. But Swat was still too risky. For the first time in my career, I was in the awkward position of trying to convince a source, Ziauddin, that the story was not worth the risk.

I too wanted her to access the broader world, so during one of my final nights in Pakistan, I took a long midnight walk with her father and spoke to him frankly about options for Malala’s education. I was less concerned with her safety as the Pakistani military had, in large part, won the war against the Taliban. We talked about her potential to thrive on a global level, and I suggested a few steps toward securing scholarships for elite boarding schools in Pakistan, or even in the United States. Her father beamed with pride, but added: “In a few years. She isn’t ready yet.” I don’t think he was ready to let her go. And who can blame him for that?