I Am Malala

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 safe from