A Taliban spokesman said that Fazlullah had ordered the attack at a meeting two months earlier. ‘Anyone who sides with the government against us will die at our hands,’ he said. ‘You will see. Other important people will soon become victims.’ He added they had used two local Swati men who had collected information about me and my route to school and had deliberately carried out the attack near an army checkpoint to show they could strike anywhere.
That first morning, just a few hours after my operation, there was suddenly a flurry of activity, people neatening their uniforms and clearing up. Then General Kayani, the army chief, swept in. ‘The nation’s prayers are with you and your daughter,’ he told my father. I had met General Kayani when he came to Swat for a big meeting at the end of 2009 after the campaign against the Taliban.
‘I am happy you did a splendid job,’ I had said at that meeting. ‘Now you just need to catch Fazlullah.’ The hall filled with applause and General Kayani came over and put his hand on my head like a father.
Colonel Junaid gave the general a briefing on the surgery and the proposed treatment plan, and General Kayani told him he should send the CT scans abroad to the best experts for advice. After his visit no one else was allowed at my bedside because of the risk of infection. But many kept coming: Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician; Mian Iftikhar Hussein, the provincial information minister and outspoken critic of the Taliban, whose only son had been shot dead by them; and the chief minister of our province, Haider Hoti, with whom I had appeared on talk-show discussions. None of them was allowed in.
‘Rest assured Malala will not die,’ Hoti told people. ‘She still has lots to do.’
Then around 3 p.m. in the afternoon two British doctors arrived by helicopter from Rawalpindi. Dr Javid Kayani and Dr Fiona Reynolds were from hospitals in Birmingham and happened to be in Pakistan advising the army on how to set up the country’s first liver transplant programme. Our country is full of shocking statistics, not just on education, and one of them is that one in seven children in Pakistan gets hepatitis, largely because of dirty needles, and many die of liver disease. General Kayani was determined to change this, and the army had once again stepped in where the civilians had failed. He had asked the doctors to brief him on their progress before flying home, which happened to be the morning after I had been shot. When they went in to see him he had two televisions on, one tuned to a local channel in Urdu and the other to Sky News in English, with news of my shooting.
The army chief and the doctor were not related despite sharing a surname but knew each other well so the general told Dr Javid he was worried about the conflicting reports he was receiving and asked him to assess me before flying back to the UK. Dr Javid, who is an emergency care consultant at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, agreed, but asked to take Dr Fiona as she is from Birmingham Children’s Hospital and a specialist in children’s intensive care. She was nervous about going to Peshawar, which has become a no-go area for foreigners, but when she heard that I was a campaigner for girls’ education she was happy to help as she herself had been lucky to go to a good school and train to become a doctor.
Colonel Junaid and the hospital director were not pleased to see them. There was some argument until Dr Javid made it clear who had sent them. The British doctors were not happy with what they found. First they turned on a tap to wash their hands and discovered there was no water. Then Dr Fiona checked the machines and levels and muttered something to Dr Javid. She asked when my blood pressure had last been checked. ‘Two hours ago,’ came the reply. She said it needed to be checked all the time and asked a nurse why there was no arterial line. She also complained that my carbon dioxide level was far too low.
My father was glad he didn’t hear what she had told Dr Javid. She had said I was ‘salvageable’ – I had had the right surgery at the right time – but my chances of recovery were now being compromised by the aftercare. After neurosurgery it is essential to monitor breathing and gas exchange, and CO2 levels are supposed to be kept in the normal range. That’s what all the tubes and machines were monitoring. Dr Javid said it was ‘like flying an aircraft – you can only do it using the right instruments’, and even if the hospital had them they weren’t being used properly. Then they left in their helicopter because it is dangerous to be in Peshawar after dark.
Among the visitors who came and were not allowed in was Rehman Malik, the interior minister. He had brought with him a passport for me. My father thanked him but he was very upset. That night when he went back to the army hostel, he took the passport from his pocket and gave it to my mother. ‘This is Malala’s, but I don’t know whether it’s to go abroad or to the heavens,’ he said. They both cried. In their bubble inside the hospital they did not realise that my story had travelled all round the world and that people were calling for me to be sent abroad for treatment.
My condition was deteriorating and my father now rarely picked up his calls. One of the few he took was from the parents of Arfa Karim, a child computer genius from Punjab with whom I had spoken during forums. She had become the youngest Microsoft-certified professional in the world at the age of nine for her skill at programming and had even been invited to meet Bill Gates in Silicon Valley. But tragically she had died that January of a heart attack following an epileptic fit. She was just sixteen, one year older than me. When her father called, my father cried. ‘Tell me how can one live without daughters,’ he sobbed.
22
Journey into the Unknown
IWAS SHOT ON a Tuesday at lunchtime. By Thursday morning my father was so convinced that I would die that he told my uncle Faiz Mohammad that the village should start preparing for my funeral. I had been put into an induced coma, my vital signs were deteriorating, my face and body were swollen and my kidneys and lungs failing. My father later told me that it was terrifying to see me connected to all the tubes in that small glass cubicle. As far as he could see, I was medically dead. He was devastated. ‘It’s too early, she’s only 15,’ he kept thinking. ‘Is her life to be so short?’
My mother was still praying – she had barely slept. Faiz Mohammad had told her she should recite the Surah of the Haj, the chapter of the Quran about pilgrimage, and she recited over and over again the same twelve verses (58–70) about the all-powerfulness of God. She told my father she felt I would live but he could not see how.
When Colonel Junaid came to check on me, my father again asked him, ‘Will she survive?’
‘Do you believe in God?’ the doctor asked him.
‘Yes,’ said my father. Colonel Junaid seemed to be a man of great spiritual depth. His advice was to appeal to God and that He would answer our prayers.
Late on Wednesday night two military doctors who were intensive care specialists had arrived by road from Islamabad. They had been sent by General Kayani after the British doctors had reported back to him that if I was left in Peshawar I would suffer brain damage or might even die because of the quality of the care and the high risk of infection. They wanted to move me but suggested that in the meantime a top doctor be brought in. But it seemed they were too late.
The hospital staff had made none of the changes Dr Fiona had recommended, and my condition had deteriorated as the night went on. Infection had set in. On Thursday morning one of the specialists, Brigadier Aslam, called Dr Fiona. ‘Malala is now very sick,’ he told her. I had developed something called disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), which meant my blood was not clotting, my blood pressure was very low and my blood acid had risen. I wasn’t passing urine any more so my kidneys were failing and my lactate levels had risen. It seemed that everything that could go wrong, had. Dr Fiona was about to leave for the airport to fly back to Birmingham – her bags were already at the airport – but when she heard the news, she offered to help and two nurses from her hospital in Birmingham stayed on with her.