I am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban (37 page)

But like my mother I am lonely. It takes time to make good friends like I had at home, and the girls at school here treat me differently. People say, ‘Oh, that’s Malala’ – they see me as ‘Malala, girls’ rights activist’. Back in the Khushal School I was just Malala, the same double-jointed girl they had always known, who loved to tell jokes and drew pictures to explain things. Oh, and who was always quarrelling with her brother and best friend! I think every class has a very well behaved girl, a very intelligent or genius girl, a very popular girl, a beautiful girl, a girl who is a bit shy, a notorious girl . . . but here I haven’t worked out yet who is who.

As there is no one here I can tell my jokes to, I save them and tell them to Moniba when we Skype. My first question is always, ‘What’s the latest news at the school?’ I love to hear who is fighting with who, and who got told off by which teacher. Moniba came first
in class in the most recent exams. My classmates still keep the seat for me with my name on it, and at the boys’ school Sir Amjad has put a big poster of me at the entrance and says he greets it every morning before going into his office.

I describe life in England to Moniba. I tell her of the streets with rows of identical houses, unlike home, where everything is different and higgledy-piggledy and a shack of mud and stones can stand next to a house as big as a castle. I tell her how they are lovely solid houses which could withstand floods and earthquakes but have no flat roofs to play on. I tell her I like England because people follow rules, they respect policemen and everything happens on time. The government is in charge and no one needs to know the name of the army chief. I see women having jobs we couldn’t imagine in Swat. They are police and security guards; they run big companies and dress exactly as they like.

I don’t often think about the shooting, though every day when I look in the mirror it is a reminder. The nerve operation has done as much as it can. I will never be exactly the same. I can’t blink fully and my left eye closes a lot when I speak. My father’s friend Hidayatullah told him we should be proud of my eye. ‘It’s the beauty of her sacrifice,’ he said.

It is still not definitely known who shot me, but a man named Ataullah Khan said he did it. The police have not managed to find him but they say they are investigating and want to interview me.

Though I don’t remember exactly what happened that day, sometimes I have flashbacks. They come unexpectedly. The worst one was in June, when we were in Abu Dhabi on the way to perform
Umrah
in Saudi Arabia. I went to a shopping mall with my mother as she wanted to buy a special burqa to pray in Mecca. I didn’t want one. I said I would just wear my shawl as it is not specified that a woman must wear a burqa. As we were walking through the mall, suddenly I could see so many men around me. I thought they were waiting for me with guns and would shoot. I was terrified though
I said nothing. I told myself,
Malala, you have already faced death. This is your second life. Don’t be afraid – if you are afraid you can’t move forward
.

We believe that when we have our first sight of the Kaaba, the black-shrouded cube in Mecca that is our most sacred place, any wish in your heart is granted by God. When we prayed at the Kaaba, we prayed for peace in Pakistan and for girls’ education, and I was surprised to find myself in tears. But when we went to the other holy places in the desert of Mecca where the Prophet lived and preached, I was shocked that they were littered with empty bottles and biscuit wrappers. It seemed that people had neglected to preserve history. I thought they had forgotten the Hadith that cleanliness is half of faith.

My world has changed so much. On the shelves of our rented living room are awards from around the world – America, India, France, Spain, Italy and Austria, and many other places. I’ve even been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest person ever. When I received prizes for my work at school I was happy as I had worked hard for them, but these prizes are different. I am grateful for them, but they only remind me how much work still needs to be done to achieve the goal of education for every boy and girl. I don’t want to be thought of as ‘the girl who was shot by the Taliban’ but ‘the girl who fought for education’. This is the cause to which I want to devote my life.

On my sixteenth birthday I was in New York to speak at the United Nations. Standing up to address an audience inside the vast hall where so many world leaders have spoken before was daunting, but I knew what I wanted to say. ‘This is your chance Malala,’ I said to myself. Only 400 people were sitting around me, but when I looked out, I imagined millions more. I did not write the speech only with the UN delegates in mind; I wrote it for every person around the world who could make a difference. I wanted to reach all people living in poverty, those children forced to work and those
who suffer from terrorism or lack of education. Deep in my heart I hoped to reach every child who could take courage from my words and stand up for his or her rights.

I wore one of Benazir Bhutto’s white shawls over my favourite pink shalwar kamiz and I called on the world’s leaders to provide free education to every child in the world. ‘Let us pick up our books and our pens,’ I said. ‘They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.’ I didn’t know how my speech was received until the audience gave me a standing ovation. My mother was in tears and my father said I had become everybody’s daughter.

Something else happened that day. My mother allowed herself to be publicly photographed for the first time. As she has lived her life in purdah and never unveiled her face on camera before, it was a great sacrifice and very difficult for her.

At breakfast the next day Atal said to me in the hotel, ‘Malala, I don’t understand why you are famous. What have you done?’ All the time we were in New York he was more excited by the Statue of Liberty, Central Park and his favourite game Beyblade!

After the speech I received messages of support from all over the world, but there was mostly silence from my own country, except that on Twitter and Facebook we could see my own Pakistani brothers and sisters turning against me. They accused me of speaking out of ‘a teen lust for fame’. One said, ‘Forget the image of your country, forget about the school. She would eventually get what she was after, a life of luxury abroad.’

I don’t mind. I know people say these things because they have seen leaders and politicians in our country who make promises they never keep. Instead things in Pakistan are getting worse every day. The endless terrorist attacks have left the whole nation in shock. People have lost trust in each other, but I would like everyone to know that I don’t want support for myself, I want the support to be for my cause of peace and education.

The most surprising letter I got after my speech was from a
Taliban commander who recently escaped from prison. His name was Adnan Rashid and he used to be in the Pakistan air force. He had been in jail since 2003 for attempting to assassinate President Musharraf. He said the Taliban had attacked me not for my campaign for education but because I tried to ‘malign [their] efforts to establish the Islamic system’. He said he was writing to me because he was shocked by my shooting and wished he could have warned me beforehand. He wrote that they would forgive me if I came back to Pakistan, wore a burqa and went to a madrasa.

Journalists urged me to answer him, but I thought,
Who is this man to say that?
The Taliban are not our rulers. It’s my life, how I live it is my choice. But Mohammed Hanif wrote an article pointing out that the good thing about the Taliban letter was that many people claim I wasn’t shot yet here they were accepting responsibility.

I know I will go back to Pakistan, but whenever I tell my father I want to go home, he finds excuses. ‘ No,
Jani
, your treatment is not complete,’ he says, or, ‘These schools are good. You should stay here and gather knowledge so you can use your words powerfully.’

He is right. I want to learn and be trained well with the weapon of knowledge. Then I will be able to fight more effectively for my cause.

Today we all know education is our basic right. Not just in the West; Islam too has given us this right. Islam says every girl and every boy should go to school. In the Quran it is written, God wants us to have knowledge. He wants us to know why the sky is blue and about oceans and stars. I know it’s a big struggle – around the world there are fifty-seven million children who are not in primary school, thirty-two million of them girls. Sadly my own country Pakistan is one of the worst places: 5.1 million children don’t even go to primary school even though in our constitution it says every child has that right. We have almost fifty million illiterate adults, two-thirds of whom are women, like my own mother.

Girls continue to be killed and schools blown up. In March there was an attack on a girls’ school in Karachi that we had visited. A
bomb and a grenade were tossed into the school playground just as a prize-giving ceremony was about to start. The headmaster, Abdur Rasheed, was killed and eight children hurt between the ages of five and ten. One eight-year-old was left disabled. When my mother heard the news, she cried and cried. ‘When our children are sleeping we wouldn’t even disturb a hair on their heads,’ she said, ‘but there are people who have guns and shoot them or hurl bombs. They don’t care that their victims are children.’ The most shocking attack was in June in the city of Quetta when a suicide bomber blew up a bus taking forty pupils to their all-girls’ college. Fourteen of them were killed. The wounded were followed to the hospital and some nurses were shot.

It’s not just the Taliban killing children. Sometimes it’s drone attacks, sometimes it’s wars, sometimes it’s hunger. And sometimes it’s their own family. In June two girls my age were murdered in Gilgit, which is a little north of Swat, for posting a video online showing themselves dancing in the rain wearing traditional dress and headscarves. Apparently their own stepbrother shot them.

Today Swat is more peaceful than other places, but there are still military everywhere, four years after they supposedly removed the Taliban. Fazlullah is still on the loose and our bus driver still under house arrest. Our valley, which was once a haven for tourists, is now seen as a place of fear. Foreigners who want to visit have to get a No Objection Certificate from the authorities in Islamabad. Hotels and craft shops are empty. It will be a long time before tourists return.

Over the last year I’ve seen many other places, but my valley remains to me the most beautiful place in the world. I don’t know when I will see it again but I know that I will. I wonder what happened to the mango seed I planted in our garden at Ramadan. I wonder if anyone is watering it so that one day future generations of daughters and sons can enjoy its fruit.

Today I looked at myself in a mirror and thought for a second. Once I had asked God for one or two extra inches in height, but
instead he made me as tall as the sky, so high that I could not measure myself. So I offered the hundred
raakat nafl
prayers that I had promised if I grew.

I love my God. I thank my Allah. I talk to him all day. He is the greatest. By giving me this height to reach people, he has also given me great responsibilities. Peace in every home, every street, every village, every country – this is my dream. Education for every boy and every girl in the world. To sit down on a chair and read my books with all my friends at school is my right. To see each and every human being with a smile of happiness is my wish.

I am Malala. My world has changed but I have not.

Glossary

aba
– affectionate Pashto term, ‘father’

ANP
– Awami National Party, Pashtun nationalist political party

baba
– affectionate term for grandfather or old man

badal
– revenge

bhabi
– affectionate Urdu term, literally ‘my brother’s wife’

bhai
– affectionate Urdu term, literally ‘my brother’

chapati
– unleavened flatbread made from flour and water

dyna
– open-backed van or truck

FATA
– Federally Administered Tribal Areas, region of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan governed under a system of indirect rule started in British times

Hadith
– saying or sayings of the Prophet, peace be upon him

Haj
– the pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam (along with the confession of faith, daily prayer, fasting during Ramadan and alms-giving), which every Muslim who can afford to should perform once in their lifetime

haram
– prohibited in Islam

hujra
– traditional Pashtun meeting place for men

imam
– local preacher

IDP
– internally displaced person

ISI
– Inter Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s biggest intelligence agency

Jamaat-e-Islami
– Party of Islam, Pakistan conservative party

JUI
– Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, Assembly of Islamic clergy, Pakistan conservative political party closely linked to the Afghan Taliban which advocates strict enforcement of Islamic law

jani
– dear one

jani mun
– soulmate

jihad
– holy war or internal struggle

jirga
– tribal assembly

khaista
– handsome one

khan
– local lord

KPK
– Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, literally ‘Area of Pashtuns’, until 2010 called North-West Frontier Province, one of the four provinces of Pakistan

lashkar
– local militia

LeT
– Lashkar-e-Taiba, literally ‘Army of the Pure’, one of Pakistan’s oldest and most powerful militant groups, active in Kashmir and with close links to the ISI