determined that the Khushal School bell would be the last to stop ringing. Madam Maryam had even got married so she could stay in Swat. Her family had moved to Karachi to get away from the conflict and, as a woman, she could not live alone.
Wednesday 14 January was the day my school closed, and when I woke up that morning I saw TV cameras in my bedroom. A Pakistani journalist called Irfan Ashraf was following me around, even as I said my prayers and brushed my teeth.
I could tell my father was in a bad mood. One of his friends had persuaded him to participate in a documentary for the
‘Yes, I was just saying there is a fear in my heart,’ I replied.
Adam was astonished. ‘What’s wrong with you people?’ he asked Irfan and my father. ‘She speaks better English than the rest of you and you’re translating for her!’ We all laughed.
The original idea for the documentary had been to follow my father on the last day of school, but at the end of the meeting Irfan asked me, ‘What would you do if there comes a day when you can’t go back to your valley and school?’ I said this wouldn’t happen. Then he insisted and I started to weep. I think it was then that Adam decided he should focus on me.
Adam could not come to Swat because it was too dangerous for foreigners. When Irfan and a cameraman arrived in Mingora, our uncle, who was staying with us, said over and over that it was too risky to have cameras in our house. My father also kept telling them to hide the cameras. But they had come a long way and it’s hard for us as Pashtuns to refuse hospitality. Besides, my father knew this could be our megaphone to the outside world. His friend had told him it would make far more impact than him roaming from pillar to post.
I had done a lot of television interviews and enjoyed speaking into the microphone so much that my friends would tease me. But I had never done anything like this. ‘Be natural,’ Irfan told me. That wasn’t easy with a camera trained on me everywhere I went even as I brushed my teeth. I showed them the uniform I couldn’t wear and told them I was scared that if the Taliban caught me going to school they would throw acid in my face as they had done to girls in Afghanistan.
We had a special assembly that final morning but it was hard to hear with the noise of helicopters overhead. Some of us spoke out against what was happening in our valley. The bell rang for the very last time, and then Madam Maryam announced it was the winter holidays. But unlike in other years no date was announced for the start of next term. Even so, some teachers still gave us homework. In the yard I hugged all my friends. I looked at the honours board and wondered if my name would ever appear on it again. Exams were due in March but how could they take place? Coming first didn’t matter if you couldn’t study at all. When someone takes away your pens you realise quite how important education is.
Before I closed the school door I looked back as if it were the last time I would ever be at school. That’s the closing shot in one part of the documentary. In reality I went back inside. My friends and I didn’t want that day to end so we decided to stay on for a while longer. We went to the primary school where there was more space to run around and played cops and robbers. Then we played mango mango, where you make a circle and sing, then when the song stops everyone has to freeze. Anyone who moves or laughs is out.
We came home from school late that day. Usually we leave at 1 p.m. but that day we stayed till three. Before we left, Moniba and I had an argument over something so silly I can’t remember what it was. Our friends couldn’t believe it. ‘You two always argue when there’s an important occasion!’ they said. It wasn’t a good way to leave things.
I told the documentary makers, ‘They cannot stop me. I will get my education if it’s at home, school or somewhere else. This is our request to the world – to save our schools, save our Pakistan, save our Swat.’
When I got home, I cried and cried. I didn’t want to stop learning. I was only eleven years old but I felt as though I had lost everything. I had told everyone in my class that the Taliban wouldn’t go through with it. ‘They’re just like our politicians – they talk the talk but they won’t do anything,’ I’d said. But then they went ahead and closed our school and I felt embarrassed. I couldn’t control myself. I was crying, my mother was crying but my father insisted, ‘You will go to school.’
For him the closing of the schools also meant the loss of business. The boys’ school would reopen after the winter holidays but the loss of the girls’ school represented a big cut in our income. More than half the school fees were overdue and my father spent the last day chasing money to pay the rent, the utility bills and the teachers’ salaries.
That night the air was full of artillery fire and I woke up three times. The next morning everything had changed. I began to think that maybe I should go to Peshawar or abroad or maybe I could ask our teachers to form a secret school in our home, as some Afghans had done during Taliban rule. Afterwards I went on as many radio and TV channels as possible. ‘They can stop us going to school but they can’t stop us learning,’ I said. I sounded hopeful but in my heart I was worried. My father and I went to Peshawar and visited lots of places to tell people what was happening. I spoke of the irony of the Taliban wanting female teachers and doctors for women yet not letting girls go to school to qualify for these jobs.
Once Muslim Khan had said girls should not go to school and learn Western ways. This from a man who had lived so long in America! He insisted he would have his own education system. ‘What would Muslim Khan use instead of the stethoscope and the thermometer?’ my father asked. ‘Are there any Eastern instruments which will treat the sick?’ The Taliban is against education because they think that when a child reads a book or learns English or studies science he or she will become Westernised.
But I said, ‘Education is education. We should learn everything and then choose which path to follow.’ Education is neither Eastern nor Western, it is human.
My mother used to tell me to hide my face when I spoke to the media because at my age I should be in purdah and she was afraid for my safety. But she never banned me from doing anything. It was a time of horror and fear. People often said the Taliban might kill my father but not me. ‘Malala is a child,’ they would say, ‘and even the Taliban don’t kill children.’
But my grandmother wasn’t so sure. Whenever my grandmother saw me speaking on television, or leaving the house she would pray, ‘Please God make Malala like Benazir Bhutto but do not give her Benazir’s short life.’
After my school closed down I continued to write the blog. Four days after the ban on girls’ schools, five more were destroyed. ‘I am quite surprised,’ I wrote, ‘because these schools had closed so why did they also need to be destroyed? No one has gone to school following the Taliban’s deadline. The army is doing nothing about it. They are sitting in their bunkers on top of the hills. They slaughter goats and eat with pleasure.’ I also wrote about people going to watch the floggings announced on Mullah FM, and the fact that the police were nowhere to be seen.
One day we got a call from America, from a student at Stanford University. Her name was Shiza Shahid and she came from Islamabad. She had seen the
Adam took us to Islamabad. It was the first time I had ever visited. Islamabad was a beautiful place with nice white bungalows and broad roads, though it has none of the natural beauty of Swat. We saw the Red Mosque where the siege had taken place, the wide, wide Constitution Avenue leading to the white-colonnaded buildings of the Parliament House and the Presidency, where Zardari now lived. General Musharraf was in exile in London.
We went to shops where I bought school books and Adam bought me DVDs of American TV programmes like
