I Am Malala

by taking their uniforms and guns and giving them each 500 rupees to make their way back. The Taliban then took two police stations in Khwazakhela and moved on to Madyan, where more police officers gave up their weapons. Very quickly the Taliban controlled most of Swat outside Mingora.

On 12 November Musharraf ordered 10,000 more troops into our valley with additional helicopter gunships. The army was everywhere. They even camped on the golf course, their big guns trained on the hillsides. They then launched an operation against Fazlullah which later became known as the first battle of Swat. It was the first time the army had launched an operation against its own people outside the FATA. Police once tried to capture Fazlullah when he was speaking at a gathering, but a giant sandstorm blew up and he managed to escape. This added to his mystery and spiritual reputation.

The militants did not give up easily. Instead they advanced to the east and on 16 November captured Alpuri, the main town of Shangla. Again local police fled without a fight. People there said Chechens and Uzbeks were among the fighters. We worried about our family in Shangla, though my father said the village was too remote for the Taliban to bother with and local people had made it clear they would keep them out. The Pakistan army had far more men and heavy weapons so they quickly managed to recapture the valley. They took Imam Deri, the headquarters of Fazlullah. The militants fled to the forests and by early December the army said they had cleared most areas. Fazlullah retreated into the mountains.

But they did not drive the Taliban away. ‘This will not last,’ my father predicted.

Fazlullah’s group was not the only one causing havoc. All across north-western Pakistan different militant groups had emerged led by people from various tribal groups. About a week after the battle of Swat, forty Taliban leaders from across our province met in South Waziristan to declare war on Pakistan. They agreed to form a united front under the banner of Tehrik-i-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP), or the Pakistan Taliban, and claimed to have 40,000 fighters between them. They chose as their leader a man in his late thirties called Baitullah Mehsud, who had fought in Afghanistan. Fazlullah was made chief of the Swat sector.

When the army arrived we thought that the fighting would soon stop, but we were wrong. There was much more to come. The Taliban targeted not only politicians, MPs and the police, but also people who were not observing purdah, wearing the wrong length of beard or the wrong kind of shalwar kamiz.

On 27 December Benazir Bhutto addressed an election rally in Liaquat Bagh, the park in Rawalpindi where our first prime minister, Liaquat Ali, was assassinated. ‘We will defeat the forces of extremism and militancy with the power of the people,’ she declared to loud cheers. She was in a special bulletproof Toyota Land Cruiser, and as it left the park she stood up on the seat and popped her head through the sunroof to wave to supporters. Suddenly there was the crack of gunfire and an explosion as a suicide bomber blew himself up by the side of her vehicle. Benazir slid back down. The Musharraf government later said she hit her head on the roof handle; other people said she had been shot.

We were watching the TV when the news came through. My grandmother said, ‘Benazir will become shaheed,’ meaning she would die an honourable death. We all started crying and praying for her. When we learned she was dead, my heart said to me, Why don’t you go there and fight for women’s rights? We were looking forward to democracy and now people asked, ‘If Benazir can die, nobody is safe.’ It felt as if my country was running out of hope.

Musharraf blamed Benazir’s death on Baitullah Mehsud, the TTP leader, and released a transcript of an intercepted phone call that was supposed to be between him and a fellow militant discussing the attack. Baitullah denied responsibility, which was unusual for the Taliban.

We used to have Islamic studies teachers – qari sahibs – who came to our home to teach the Quran to me and other local children. By the time the Taliban came I had finished my recitation of the complete Quran, what we call Khatam ul-Quran, much to the delight of Baba, my grandfather the cleric. We recite in Arabic, and most people don’t actually know what the verses mean, but I had also started learning them in translation. To my horror one qari sahib tried to justify Benazir’s assassination. ‘It was a very good job she was killed,’ he said. ‘When she was alive she was useless. She was not following Islam properly. If she had lived there would have been anarchy.’

I was shocked and told my father. ‘We don’t have any option. We are dependent on these mullahs to learn the Quran,’ he said. ‘But you just use him to learn the literal meaning of the words; don’t follow his explanations and interpretation. Only learn what God says. His words are divine messages, which you are free and independent to interpret.’

11 The Clever Class

IT WAS SCHOOL that kept me going in those dark days. When I was in the street it felt as though every man I passed might be a talib. We hid our school bags and our books in our shawls. My father always said that the most beautiful thing in a village in the morning is the sight of a child in a school uniform, but now we were afraid to wear them.

We had moved up to high school. Madam Maryam said no one wanted to teach our class as we asked so many questions. We liked to be known as the clever girls. When we decorated our hands with henna for holidays and weddings, we drew calculus and chemical formulae instead of flowers and butterflies. My rivalry with Malka- e-Noor continued, but after the shock of being beaten by her when she first joined our school, I worked hard and had managed to regain my position on the school honours board for first in class. She usually came second and Moniba third. The teachers told us examiners first looked at how much we had written, then presentation. Moniba had the most beautiful writing and presentation of the three of us, but I always told her she did not trust herself enough. She worked hard as she worried that if she got low marks her male relatives might use it as an excuse to stop her education. I was weakest in maths – once I got zero in a test – but I worked hard at it. My chemistry teacher Sir Obaidullah (we called all our teachers Sir or Miss) said I was a born politician because, at the start of oral exams, I would always say, ‘Sir, can I just say you are the best teacher and yours is my favourite class.’

Some parents complained that I was being favoured because my father owned the school, but people were always surprised that despite our rivalry we were all good friends and not jealous of each other. We also competed in what we call board exams. These would select the best students from private schools in the district, and one year Malka-e-Noor and I got exactly the same marks. We did another paper at school to see who would get the prize and again we got equal marks. So people wouldn’t think I was getting special treatment, my father arranged for us to do papers at another school, that of his friend Ahmad Shah. Again we got the same, so we both got the prize.

There was more to school than work. We liked performing plays. I wrote a sketch based on Romeo and Juliet about corruption. I played Romeo as a civil servant interviewing people for a job. The first candidate is a beautiful girl, and he asks her very easy questions such as, ‘How many wheels does a bicycle have?’ When she replies, ‘Two,’ he says, ‘You are so brilliant.’ The next candidate is a man so Romeo asks him impossible things like, ‘Without leaving your chair tell me the make of the fan in the room above us.’ ‘How could I possibly know?’ asks the candidate. ‘You’re telling me you have a PhD and you don’t know!’ replies Romeo. He decides to give the job to the girl.

The girl was played by Moniba, of course, and another classmate Attiya played the part of my assistant to add some salt, pepper and masala with her witty asides. Everyone laughed a lot. I like to mimic people, and in breaks my friends used to beg me to impersonate our teachers, particularly Sir Obaidullah. With all the bad stuff going on in those days, we needed small, small reasons to laugh.

The army action at the end of 2007 had not got rid of the Taliban. The army had stayed in Swat and were everywhere in the town, yet Fazlullah still broadcast every day on the radio and throughout 2008 the situation was even worse than before with bomb blasts and killings. All we talked about in those days was the army and the Taliban and the feeling that we were caught between the two. Attiya used to tease me by saying, ‘Taliban is good, army not good.’ I replied, ‘If there is a snake and a lion coming to attack us what would we say is good, the snake