I am Malala

that the bus turned right off the main road at the army checkpoint as always and rounded the corner past the deserted cricket ground. I don’t remember any more.
    In my dreams about the shooting my father is also in the bus and he is shot with me, and then there are men everywhere and I am searching for my father.
    In reality what happened was we suddenly stopped. On our left was the tomb of Sher Mohammad Khan, the finance minister of the first ruler of Swat, all overgrown with grass, and on our right the snack factory. We must have been less than 200 metres from the checkpoint.
    We couldn’t see in front, but a young bearded man in light-coloured clothes had stepped into the road and waved the van down.
    ‘Is this the Khushal School bus?’ he asked our driver. Usman Bhai Jan thought this was a stupid question as the name was painted on the side. ‘Yes,’ he said.
    ‘I need information about some children,’ said the man.

    ‘You should go to the office,’ said Usman Bhai Jan.
    As he was speaking another young man in white approached the back of the van. ‘Look, it’s one of those journalists coming to ask for an interview,’ said Moniba. Since I’d started speaking at events with my father to campaign for girls’ education and against those like the Taliban who want to hide us away, journalists often came, even foreigners, though not like this in the road.
    The man was wearing a peaked cap and had a handkerchief over his nose and mouth as if he had flu. He looked like a college student. Then he swung himself onto the tailboard at the back and leaned in right over us.
    ‘Who is Malala?’ he demanded.
    No one said anything, but several of the girls looked at me. I was the only girl with my face not covered.
    That’s when he lifted up a black pistol. I later learned it was a Colt 45. Some of the girls screamed. Moniba tells me I squeezed her hand.
    My friends say he fired three shots, one after another. The first went through my left eye socket and out under my left shoulder. I slumped forward onto Moniba, blood coming from my left ear, so the other two bullets hit the girls next to me. One bullet went into Shazia’s left hand. The third went through her left shoulder and into the upper right arm of Kainat Riaz.
    My friends later told me the gunman’s hand was shaking as he fired.
    By the time we got to the hospital my long hair and Moniba’s lap were full of blood.
    Who is Malala? I am Malala and this is my story.

PART ONE

    Before the Taliban

    Sorey sorey pa golo rashey
Da be nangai awaz de ra ma sha mayena
    Rather I receive your bullet-riddled body with honour
Than news of your cowardice on the battlefield
    (Traditional Pashto couplet)

1

    A Daughter Is Born
    W HEN I WAS born, people in our village commiserated with my mother and nobody congratulated my father. I arrived at dawn as the last star blinked out. We Pashtuns see this as an auspicious sign. My father didn’t have any money for the hospital or for a midwife so a neighbour helped at my birth. My parents’ first child was stillborn but I popped out kicking and screaming. I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden away behind a curtain, their role in life simply to prepare food and give birth to children.
    For most Pashtuns it’s a gloomy day when a daughter is born. My father’s cousin Jehan Sher Khan Yousafzai was one of the few who came to celebrate my birth and even gave a handsome gift of money. Yet, he brought with him a vast family tree of our clan, the Dalokhel Yousafzai, going right back to my great-great-grandfather and showing only the male line. My father, Ziauddin, is different from most Pashtun men. He took the tree, drew a line like a lollipop from his name and at the end of it he wrote, ‘Malala’. His cousin laughed in astonishment. My father didn’t care. He says he looked into my eyes after I was born and fell in love. He told people, ‘I know there is something different about this child.’ He even asked friends to throw dried fruits, sweets and coins into my cradle, something we usually only do for boys.
    I was named after Malalai of Maiwand, the greatest heroine of Afghanistan. Pashtuns are a proud people of many tribes split between Pakistan and Afghanistan. We live as we have for centuries by a code called Pashtunwali , which obliges us to give hospitality to all guests and in which the most important value is nang or honour. The worst thing that