Malala Yousafzai recalls traumatic flashbacks in memoir

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai has shared a deeply personal account of trauma resurfacing years after surviving an attack by the Taliban, in an exclusive extract from her forthcoming memoir.

In the passage, Yousafzai describes a night during her university years at Oxford, when experimenting with marijuana triggered vivid flashbacks to the moment she was shot as a teenager in Pakistan, says the Guardian.

The account begins with a lighthearted scene of student life - an evening study session interrupted by a friend's invitation to relax in a campus garden shed. Yousafzai recalls joining friends in smoking from a bong, unaware that the experience would soon take a distressing turn.

Moments after inhaling, she began to lose track of time and control of her body. As she tried to walk back to her dormitory, her muscles froze and her surroundings blurred. "My brain was sending signals into a void," she writes, recounting how fear set in as she realized she could not move.

That physical paralysis, she explains, brought back sensations she had once experienced while in a coma at age 15 - after being shot in the head by a Taliban gunman on her way home from school in Pakistan's Swat Valley in 2012.

The memoir describes how those memories - long buried - flooded back in graphic detail. Yousafzai recalls scenes of the shooting, the chaos that followed, and the sound of strangers shouting as her father reached for her hand. "I was awake and buried alive in the coffin of my body," she writes.

Her friend Anisa, alarmed by the reaction, helped her back to a dorm room where Yousafzai spent the night struggling to regain control. The next morning, though her symptoms had eased, she remained shaken and sleepless, replaying the memories that had resurfaced.

The extract reflects on the lasting psychological impact of the attack that made Yousafzai a global symbol of girls' education and resilience. Though she had long told interviewers she remembered nothing of the incident, the memoir reveals that the memories had remained "lurking in [her] brain" for years.

Now 28, Yousafzai continues to advocate for girls' education through the Malala Fund, an organization she co-founded to support access to schooling for young women around the world.

The memoir offers an introspective look at her life beyond activism - exploring identity, trauma, and healing after surviving violence. It is due for release later this month.