Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize — and was shot in the head by the Taliban — for advocating girls' education, told President Barack Obama he could "change the world" if only he'd send books instead of guns to other countries, she said Tuesday.
"My message was very simple," Malala, who is now 17, said Tuesday at the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia, speaking of her recent meeting with the president. "I said instead of sending guns, send books. Instead of sending weapons, send teachers." Asked by the host, Ronan Farrow of MSNBC, how Obama reacted, she said simply that his response was "pretty political."
Malala said she tries to live as close to a normal life as she can amid the attention that has come her way since a Taliban gunman shot her two years ago in northwest Pakistan. Thinking back on it now, Malala sometimes compares her story to the plot of a movie. "At the end, the villain loses and the hero wins, and there is a happy ending," she said to applause.
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