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Prahlāda sits cross-legged on the floor of the family’s main room, a woolen shawl draped over his (her) shoulders. The first pale light of dawn sneaks through bullet-riddled walls, revealing a scene of disarray, a cracked window, books and cushions strewn about from last night’s tremors. Prahlāda cradles Malala’s diary in his lap. He has just finished writing by the light of a flickering candle stub. Outside, the gunfire has ceased, leaving an eerie predawn hush. There is a heaviness in the air, but also an unmistakable sense of survival: they have made it through the night.

Prahlāda carefully places the pen down. The final line he wrote, a hopeful prayer for the coming day, glistens in wet ink. As he closes the diary, he presses Malala’s hand over its cover in a gesture of offering, the way he would close a scripture after recitation. In his heart, he dedicates this act: May these truthful words be my service to You, O Lord. A faint rooster crows somewhere in the distance, a herald of morning. Prahlāda lifts his gaze to the window. The charcoal sky is beginning to lighten to gray. He notices that the shelling and screams have given way to an uncanny quiet. The only sounds now are the tentative stirrings of life: a baby crying a few houses away, the shuffle of his (Malala’s) mother in the kitchen boiling tea to calm everyone’s nerves. Prahlāda’s borrowed body is exhausted, but he feels an urgent energy carrying him. With deliberate care, he tucks the small folded note he has written to Malala into the front of the diary where she cannot miss it. The paper pokes out just slightly, a secret beacon of solidarity.

Suddenly, a loud rap sounds at the door – not violent, but urgent. Prahlāda’s head snaps up. Ziauddin, Malala’s father, rushes to unlatch it. In spills a neighbor, wide-eyed and breathless. “Have you heard?” the man gasps. “A girls’ school was bombed just before sunrise, across the river.”

Prahlāda’s heart clenches. He springs up, Malala’s slender legs almost buckling, and moves toward the doorway to listen. The neighbor continues in a trembling voice, “No casualties – it was empty, thank God – but they’re sending a message. It’s really happening. No school for girls today… or any day, until this ends.”

Behind Prahlāda, Malala’s mother muffles a sob. The words hang in the room like a death sentence. Prahlāda feels a surge of sorrow for Malala and her sisters in faith… Their world has indeed changed overnight. But alongside the sorrow, a flame of defiance burns within him. He knows what it is to face tyrants; he knows the power of faith to withstand even the cruellest edicts. Stepping forward with Malala’s dust-smudged face, Prahlāda gently touches her father’s elbow.

We will not give up, Aba,” he says quietly, using the respectful Pashto word for father. Ziauddin looks at his daughter’s face, surprised by the calm determination in her young eyes. Prahlāda continues, “They can stop us from going to school, but they cannot stop us from learning in our home, from writing, from speaking. We will find a way.”

His words are simple, but spoken with an authority that makes both men stand a little straighter. Ziauddin nods slowly, pride and pain mingling on his features.

Prahlāda becomes aware of the diary still clutched in his hands. As the neighbor departs into the dawn to spread the grim news, Prahlāda holds the notebook to his chest. Through Malala’s ears, he hears the faint sound of the azān again from a more distant mosque, or perhaps it is memory. It is now the morning of January 15, 2009, a day that begins an era of darkness for the girls of Swat.

Yet, standing amid the broken pieces of the night, Prahlāda feels the stirrings of a new resolve. He looks around at this humble home: At Malala’s mother, wiping her eyes and straightening her dupatta; At her little brothers, still asleep, oblivious to the ban; At her father, already contemplating whom to appeal to or what strategies to employ. This family’s fight is just, Prahlāda thinks. In serving their cause, I serve God. The candle stub sputters and dies, finally spent, but light has grown in the sky, casting everything in gentle blue. Prahlāda’s fingers tighten around the diary’s cover one last time. Through Malala’s lips, he whispers a line from his own scriptures that seems perfectly at home here: “Even a little light dispels a lot of darkness.” Though no one else hears it, that promise hangs in the air as the scene stills.