Pakistan

I didn't have time to read the Time's 2012 Person of the Year until I brought the issue on my Thailand trip.

It's hard to imagine that the shortlisted one is even more admirable than the champion. Yet, that might be the reason the editor made President Obama on the silver border cover, and at the same time added another cover depicting Malala Yousafzai inside the magazine. The fact that a 15-year-old Pakistani girl can stay just behind Obama means quite something. If you ask me, Malala is just as influential as Obama, maybe even more so.

I was moved by Malala's courage to stand up and speak for an estimated 27 million of the nearly 54 million school-age Pakistan children who are not in the class, the majority of them being girls. She'd been writing blogs for girls' right to education, and then the Taliban tried to silence her with a bullet to her head. She didn't listen to them, and was glad to this day. The bullet had pierced the skin just behind her left eye, traveled along the exterior of her skull, gone through her jawbone, all the way through her neck. It did nothing to stop her voice from being heard. The latest Time issue ran a story describing Malala back in a school uniform.

If Obama made the history, Malala created a miracle.