I Am Malala

by Malala Yousafzai

  It was April 2012, the month after our exams so we were all feeling relaxed. We were a group of about seventy girls. Our teachers and my parents were there too. My father had hired three Flying Coaches but we could not all fit in, so five of us – me, Moniba and three other girls – were in the dyna, the school van. It wasn’t very comfortable, especially because we also had giant pots of chicken and rice on the floor for the picnic, but it was only half an hour’s drive. We had fun, singing songs on the way there. Moniba was looking very beautiful, her skin porcelain-pale. ‘What skin cream are you using?’ I asked her.

  ‘The same one you’re using,’ she replied.

  I knew that could not be true. ‘No. Look at my dark skin and look at yours!’

  We visited the White Palace and saw where the Queen had slept and the gardens of beautiful flowers. Sadly we could not see the wali’s room as it had been damaged by the floods.

  We ran around for a while in the green forest, then took some photographs and waded into the river and splashed each other with water. The drops sparkled in the sun. There was a waterfall down the cliff and for a while we sat on the rocks and listened to it. Then Moniba started splashing me again.

  ‘Don’t! I don’t want to get my clothes wet!’ I pleaded. I walked off with two other girls she didn’t like. The other girls stirred things up, what we call ‘putting masala on the situation’. It was a recipe for another argument between Moniba and me. That put me in a bad mood, but I cheered up when we got to the top of the cliff, where lunch was being prepared. Usman Bhai Jan, our driver, made us laugh as usual. Madam Maryam had brought her baby boy and Hannah, her two-year-old, who looked like a little doll but was full of mischief.

  Lunch was a disaster. When the school assistants put the pans on the fire to heat up the chicken curry, they panicked that there was not enough food for so many girls and added water from the stream. We said it was ‘the worst lunch ever’. It was so watery that one girl said, ‘The sky could be seen in the soupy curry.’

  Like on all our trips my father got us all to stand on a rock and talk about our impressions of the day before we left. This time all anyone talked about was how bad the food was. My father was embarrassed and for once, short of words.

  The next morning a school worker came with milk, bread and eggs to our house for our breakfast. My father always answered the door as women must stay inside. The man told him the shopkeeper had given him a photocopied letter.

  When my father read it, he went pale. ‘By God, this is terrible propaganda against our school!’ he told my mother. He read it out.

  Dear Muslim brothers

  There is a school, the Khushal School, which is run by an NGO [NGOs have a very bad reputation among religious people in our country so this was a way to invite people’s wrath] and is a centre of vulgarity and obscenity. It is a Hadith of the Holy Prophet that if you see something bad or evil you should stop it with your own hand. If you are unable to do that then you should tell others about it, and if you can’t do that you should think about how bad it is in your heart. I have no personal quarrel with the principal but I am telling you what Islam says. This school is a centre of vulgarity and obscenity and they take girls for picnics to different resorts. If you don’t stop it you will have to answer to God on Doomsday. Go and ask the manager of the White Palace Hotel and he will tell you what these girls did…

  He put down the piece of paper. ‘It has no signature. Anonymous.’

  We sat stunned.

  ‘They know no one will ask the manager,’ said my father. ‘People will just imagine something terrible went on.’

  ‘We know what happened there. The girls did nothing bad,’ my mother reassured him.

  My father called my cousin Khanjee to find out how widely the letters had been distributed. He called back with bad news – they had been left everywhere, though most shopkeepers had ignored them and thrown them away. There were also giant posters pasted on the front of the mosque with the same accusations.

  At school my classmates were terrified. ‘Sir, they are saying very bad things about our school,’ they said to my father. ‘What will our parents say?’

  My father gathered all the girls into the courtyard. ‘Why are you afraid?’ he asked. ‘Did you do anything against Islam? Did you do anything immoral? No. You just splashed water and took pictures, so don’t be scared. This is the propaganda of the followers of Mullah Fazlullah. Down with them! You have the right to enjoy greenery and waterfalls and landscape just as boys do.’

  My father spoke like a lion, but I could see in his heart he was worried and scared. Only one person came and withdrew his sister from the school, but we knew that was not the end of it. Shortly after that we were told a man who had completed a peace walk from Dera Ismail Khan was coming through Mingora and we wanted to welcome him. I was on the way to meet him with my parents when we were approached by a short man who was frantically talking on two different phones. ‘Don’t go that way,’ he urged. ‘There is a suicide bomber over there!’ We’d promised to meet the peace walker, so we went by a different route, placed a garland round his neck, then left quickly for home.

  All through that spring and summer odd things kept happening. Strangers came to the house asking questions about my family. My father said they were from the intelligence services. The visits became more frequent after my father and the Swat Qaumi Jirga held a meeting in our school to protest against army plans for the people of Mingora and our community defence committees to conduct night patrols.’The army say there is peace,’ said my father. ‘So why do we need flag marches and night patrols?’

  Then our school hosted a painting competition for the children of Mingora sponsored by my father’s friend who ran an NGO for women’s rights. The pictures were supposed to show the equality of the sexes or highlight discrimination against women. That morning two men from the intelligence services came to our school to see my father. ‘What is going on in your school?’ they demanded.

  ‘This is a school,’ he replied. ‘There’s a painting competition just as we have debating competitions, cookery competitions and essay contests.’ The men got very angry and so did my father. ‘Everyone knows me and what I do!’ he said. ‘Why don’t you do your real work and find Fazlullah and those whose hands are red with the blood of Swat?’

  That Ramadan a friend of my father’s in Karachi called Wakeel Khan sent clothes for the poor, which he wanted us to distribute. We went to a big hall to hand them out. Before we had even started, intelligence agents came and asked, ‘What are you doing? Who brought these outfits?’

  On 12 July I turned fourteen, which in Islam means you are an adult. With my birthday came the news that the Taliban had killed the owner of the Swat Continental Hotel, who was on a peace committee. He was on his way from home to his hotel in Mingora Bazaar when they ambushed him in a field.

  Once again people started worrying that the Taliban were creeping back. But whereas in 2008–9 there were many threats to all sorts of people, this time the threats were specific to those who spoke against militants or the high-handed behaviour of the army.

  ‘The Taliban is not an organised force like we imagine,’ said my father’s friend Hidayatullah when they discussed it. ‘It’s a mentality, and this mentality is everywhere in Pakistan. Someone who is against America, against the Pakistan establishment, against English law, he has been infected by the Taliban.’

  It was late in the evening of 3 August when my father received an alarming phone call from a Geo TV correspondent called Mehboob. He was the nephew of my father’s friend Zahid Khan, the hotel owner who had been attacked in 2009. People used to say both Zahid Khan and my father were on the Taliban radar and both would be killed; the only thing they didn’t know was which would be killed first. Mehboob told us that his uncle had been on his way to isha prayers, the last prayers of the day, at the mosque on the street near his house when he was shot in the face.

  When he heard the news my father said the earth
fell away from his feet. ‘It was as if I had been shot,’ he said. ‘I was sure it was my turn next.’

  We pleaded with my father not to go to the hospital as it was very late and the people who had attacked Zahid Khan might be waiting for him. But he said not to go would be cowardly. He was offered an escort by some fellow political activists but he thought that it would be too late to go if he waited for them. So he called my cousin to take him. My mother began to pray.

  When he got to the hospital only one other member of the jirga committee was there. Zahid Khan was bleeding so much it was as if his white beard was bathed in red. But he had been lucky. A man had fired at him three times from close range with a pistol, but Zahid Khan had managed to grab his hand so only the first bullet struck. Strangely it went through his neck and out through his nose. Later he said he remembered a small clean-shaven man just standing there smiling, not even wearing a mask. Then darkness overcame him as if he had fallen into a black hole. The irony was that Zahid Khan had only recently started to walk to the mosque again because he thought it was safe.

  After praying for his friend, my father talked to the media. ‘We don’t understand why he’s been attacked when they claim there’s peace,’ he said. ‘It’s a big question for the army and administration.’

  People warned my father to leave the hospital. ‘Ziauddin, it’s midnight and you’re here! Don’t be stupid!’ they said. ‘You are as vulnerable and as wanted a target as he is. Don’t take any more risks!’

  Finally Zahid Khan was transferred to Peshawar to be operated on and my father came home. I had not gone to sleep because I was so worried. After that I double-checked all the locks every night.

  At home our phone did not stop ringing with people calling to warn my father he could be the next target. Hidayatullah was one of the first to call. ‘For God’s sake be careful,’ he warned. ‘It could have been you. They are shooting jirga members one by one. You are the spokesman – how can they possibly let you live?’

  My father was convinced the Taliban would hunt him down and kill him, but he again refused security from the police. ‘If you go around with a lot of security the Taliban will use Kalashnikovs or suicide bombers and more people will be killed,’ he said. ‘At least I’ll be killed alone.’ Nor would he leave Swat. ‘Where can I go?’ he asked my mother. ‘I cannot leave the area. I am president of the Global Peace Council, the spokesperson of the council of elders, the president of the Swat Association of Private Schools, director of my school and head of my family.’

  His only precaution was to change his routine. One day he would go to the primary school first, another day to the girls’ school, the next day to the boys’ school. I noticed wherever he went he would look up and down the street four or five times.

  Despite the risks, my father and his friends continued to be very active, holding protests and press conferences. ‘Why was Zahid Khan attacked if there’s peace? Who attacked him?’ they demanded. ‘Since we’ve come back from being IDPs we haven’t seen any attacks on army and police. The only targets now are peace-builders and civilians.’

  The local army commander was not happy. ‘I tell you there are no terrorists in Mingora,’ he insisted. ‘Our reports say so.’ He claimed that Zahid Khan had been shot because of a dispute over property.

  Zahid Khan was in hospital for twelve days then at home recuperating for a month after having plastic surgery to repair his nose. But he refused to be silent. If anything he became more outspoken, particularly against the intelligence agencies, as he was convinced they were behind the Taliban. He wrote opinion pieces in newspapers saying that the conflict in Swat had been manufactured. ‘I know who targeted me. What we need to know is who imposed these militants on us,’ he wrote. He demanded that the chief justice set up a judicial commission to investigate who had brought the Taliban into our valley.

  He drew a sketch of his attacker and said the man should be stopped before shooting anyone else. But the police did nothing to find him.

  After the threats against me my mother didn’t like me walking anywhere and insisted I get a rickshaw to school and take the bus home even though it was only a five-minute walk. The bus dropped me at the steps leading up to our street. A group of boys from our neighbourhood used to hang round there. Sometimes there was a boy called Haroon with them, who was a year older than me and used to live on our street. We had played together as children and later he told me he was in love with me. But then a pretty cousin came to stay with our neighbour Safina and he fell in love with her instead. When she said she wasn’t interested he turned his attention back to me. After that they moved to another street and we moved into their house. Then Haroon went away to army cadet college.

  But he came back for the holidays, and one day when I returned home from school he was hanging around on the street. He followed me to the house and put a note inside our gate where I would see it. I told a small girl to fetch it for me. He had written, ‘Now you have become very popular, I still love you and know you love me. This is my number, call me.’

  I gave the note to my father and he was angry. He called Haroon and told him he would tell his father. That was the last time I saw him. After that the boys stopped coming to our street, but one of the small boys who played with Atal would call out suggestively, ‘How is Haroon?’ whenever I passed by. I got so fed up with it that one day I told Atal to bring the boy inside. I shouted at him so angrily that he stopped.

  I told Moniba what had happened once we were friends again. She was always very careful about interactions with boys because her brothers watched everything. ‘Sometimes I think it’s easier to be a Twilight vampire than a girl in Swat,’ I sighed. But really I wished that being hassled by a boy was my biggest problem.

  20

  Who is Malala?

  ONE MORNING IN late summer when my father was getting ready to go to school he noticed that the painting of me looking at the sky which we had been given by the school in Karachi had shifted in the night. He loved that painting and had hung it over his bed. Seeing it crooked disturbed him. ‘Please put it straight,’ he asked my mother in an unusually sharp tone.

  That same week our maths teacher Miss Shazia arrived at school in a hysterical state. She told my father that she’d had a nightmare in which I came to school with my leg badly burned and she had tried to protect it. She begged him to give some cooked rice to the poor, as we believe that if you give rice, even ants and birds will eat the bits that drop to the floor and will pray for us. My father gave money instead and she was distraught, saying that wasn’t the same.

  We laughed at Miss Shazia’s premonition, but then I started having bad dreams too. I didn’t say anything to my parents but whenever I went out I was afraid that Taliban with guns would leap out at me or throw acid in my face, as they had done to women in Afghanistan. I was particularly scared of the steps leading up to our street where the boys used to hang out. Sometimes I thought I heard footsteps behind me or imagined figures slipping into the shadows.

  Unlike my father, I took precautions. At night I would wait until everyone was asleep – my mother, my father, my brothers, the other family in our house and any guests we had from our village – then I’d check every single door and window. I’d go outside and make sure the front gate was locked. Then I would check all the rooms, one by one. My room was at the front with lots of windows and I kept the curtains open. I wanted to be able to see everything, though my father told me not to. ‘If they were going to kill me they would have done it in 2009,’ I said. But I worried someone would put a ladder against the house, climb over the wall and break in through a window.

  Then I’d pray. At night I used to pray a lot. The Taliban think we are not Muslims but we are. We believe in God more than they do and we trust him to protect us. I used to say the Ayat al-Kursi, the Verse of the Throne from the second surah of the Quran, the Chapter of the Cow. This is a very special verse and we believe that if you say it three times at night your home will be saf
e from shayatin or devils. When you say it five times your street will be safe, and seven times will protect the whole area. So I’d say it seven times or even more. Then I’d pray to God, ‘Bless us. First our father and family, then our street, then our whole mohalla, then all Swat.’ Then I’d say, ‘No, all Muslims.’ Then, ‘No, not just Muslims; bless all human beings.’

  The time of year I prayed most was during exams. It was the one time when my friends and I did all five prayers a day like my mother was always trying to get me to do. I found it particularly hard in the afternoon, when I didn’t want to be dragged away from the TV. At exam time I prayed to Allah for high marks though our teachers used to warn us, ‘God won’t give you marks if you don’t work hard. God showers us with his blessings but he is honest as well.’

  So I studied hard too. Usually I liked exams as a chance to show what I could do. But when they came round in October 2012 I felt under pressure. I did not want to come second to Malka-e-Noor again as I had in March. Then she had beaten me by not just one or two marks, the usual difference between us, but by five marks! I had been taking extra lessons with Sir Amjad who ran the boys’ school. The night before the exams began I stayed up studying until three o’clock in the morning and reread an entire textbook.

  The first paper, on Monday, 8 October, was physics. I love physics because it is about truth, a world determined by principles and laws – no messing around or twisting things like in politics, particularly those in my country. As we waited for the signal to start the exam, I recited holy verses to myself. I completed the paper but I knew I’d made a mistake filling in the blanks. I was so cross with myself I almost cried. It was just one question worth only one mark, but it made me feel that something devastating was going to happen.