I am Malala

them about this to keep it private.
    I was taken into theatre on 11 November for a surgeon called Richard Irving to carry out the operation. He had explained to me that this nerve controlled the side of my face, and its job was to open and close my left eye, move my nose, raise my left eyebrow and make me smile. Repairing the nerve was such delicate work that it took eight and a half hours. The surgeon first cleared my ear canal of scar tissue and bone fragments and discovered that my left eardrum was damaged. Then he followed the facial nerve from the temporal bone where it enters the skull all the way to its exit, and on the way removed many more fragments of bone which had been restricting my jaw movement. He found two centimetres of my nerve completely missing where it leaves the skull and rerouted it in front of my ear from its normal passage behind the ear, to make up for the gap.
    The operation went well, though it was a three-month wait before the left side of my face started working bit by bit. I had to do facial exercises every day in front of my small mirror. Mr Irving told me that after six months the nerve would start working though I would never be completely the same. To my delight I could soon smile and wink my eye, and week by week my parents saw more movement coming into my face. Though it was my face, I could see it was my parents who were happiest to have it back. Afterwards Mr Irving said it was the best outcome he had seen in twenty years of facial nerve surgery, and it was 86 per cent recovered.
    The other good result was that finally my headaches lifted and I started reading again. I began with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , one of a pile of books sent to me by Gordon Brown. I loved reading about Dorothy and how even though she was trying to get back home she stopped and helped those in need like the cowardly lion and the rusty tin man. She had to overcome a lot of obstacles to get where she was going, and I thought if you want to achieve a goal, there will be hurdles in your way but you must continue. I was so excited by the book that I read it quickly and afterwards told my father all about it. He was very happy because he thought if I could memorise and narrate such detail then my memory must be fine.
    I knew my parents were worried about my memory as I told them I didn’t remember anything about the shooting and kept forgetting the names of my friends. They weren’t very subtle. One day my father asked, ‘Malala, can you sing us some Pashto tapey ?’I sang a verse we liked: ‘When you start your journey from the end of a snake’s tail,/ You will end up on its head in an ocean of poison.’ To us that referred to how the authorities in Pakistan had initially used the militants and now were in a mess of their own making. Then I said, ‘Actually there’s a tapa I want to rewrite.’
    My father looked intrigued. Tapey are the centuries-old collected wisdom of our society; you don’t change them. ‘Which one?’ he asked.
    ‘This one,’ I said.
If the men cannot win the battle, O my country,
Then the women will come forth and win you an honour.

    I wanted to change it to:
Whether the men are winning or losing the battle, O my country,
The women are coming and the women will win you an honour.

    He laughed and repeated the story to everyone, as he always does.
    I worked hard in the gym and with the physiotherapist to get my arms and legs working properly again and was rewarded on 6 December with my first trip out of the hospital. I told Yma that I loved nature so she arranged for two staff to take me and my mother on an outing to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, not far from the hospital. They didn’t let my father come as they thought he would be recognised, having been in the media a lot. Even so I was very happy, my first time back in the outside world, seeing Birmingham and England.
    They told me to sit in the back of the car in the middle, not next to a window, which was annoying as I wanted to see everything in this new country. I didn’t realise they were trying to protect my head from any bump. When we entered the gardens and I saw all the green plants and trees, it was a powerful reminder of home. I kept saying, ‘This one is in my valley,’ and, ‘We also have this one.’ I am very proud of the beautiful plants of my valley. It was odd seeing all the other visitors, for whom it was just a normal day out. I felt like Dorothy at the end of her journey. My mother was so