Later they would discover that, rather than do whatever it took to get my parents on the first plane to Birmingham to join their sick daughter, the interior minister Rehman Malik was hoping to fly with them so they could have a joint press conference at the hospital, and it was taking some time to make the arrangements. He also wanted to make sure they didn’t ask for political asylum in Britain, which would be embarrassing for his government. Eventually he asked my parents outright if this was their plan. It was funny because my mother had no idea what asylum was and my father had never even thought about it – there were other things on his mind.
When my parents moved to Kashmir House they were visited by Sonia Shahid, the mother of Shiza, our friend who had arranged the trip to Islamabad for all us Khushal School girls. She had assumed they had gone to the UK with me, and when she found out they were still in Pakistan, she was horrified. They said they had been told there were no plane tickets to Birmingham. Sonia brought them clothes as they had left everything in Swat and got my father the number for President Zardari’s office. He called and left a message. That night the president spoke to him and promised everything would be sorted out. ‘I know what it’s like to be kept from one’s children,’ he said, referring to his years in jail.
When I heard they would be in Birmingham in two days I had one request. ‘Bring my school bag,’ I pleaded to my father. ‘If you can’t go to Swat to fetch it, no matter – buy new books for me because in March it’s my board examination.’ Of course I wanted to come first in class. I especially wanted my physics book because physics is difficult for me, and I needed to practise numericals as my maths is not so good and they are hard for me to solve.
I thought I’d be back home by November.
It ended up being ten days before my parents came. Those ten days I spent in hospital without them felt like a hundred days. It was boring and I wasn’t sleeping well. I stared at the clock in my room. The changing time reassured me I was alive and I saw for the first time in my life that I was waking early. Every morning I longed for 7 a.m. when the nurses would come. The nurses and Dr Fiona played games with me. QEH is not a children’s hospital so they brought over a play coordinator with games. One of my favourites was Connect 4. I usually drew with Dr Fiona but I could beat everyone else. The nurses and hospital staff felt sorry for me in a far-off land away from my family and were very kind, particularly Yma Choudhury, the jolly director of operations, and Julie Tracy, the head nurse, who would sit and hold my hand.
The only thing I had with me from Pakistan was a beige shawl which Colonel Junaid had given to Dr Fiona as a present for me so they went clothes shopping to buy me things. They had no idea how conservative I was or what a teenage girl from the Swat Valley would wear. They went to Next and British Home Stores and came back with bags of T-shirts, pyjamas, socks and even bras. Yma asked me if I would like shalwar kamiz and I nodded. ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ she asked. Pink was, of course, my reply.
They were worried I wasn’t eating. But I didn’t like the hospital food and I was worried it was not halal. The only things I’d eat there were the nutritional milkshakes. Nurse Julie discovered I liked Cheesy Wotsits so brought me those. ‘What do you like?’ they asked me. ‘Fried chicken,’ I replied. Yma discovered there was a halal Kentucky Fried Chicken at Small Heath so would go there every afternoon to buy me chicken and chips. One day she even cooked me a curry.
To keep me occupied they brought me a DVD player. One of the first movies they got me was Bend it Like Beckham, thinking the story of a Sikh girl challenging her cultural norms and playing football would appeal to me. I was shocked when the girls took off their shirts to practise in sports bras and I made the nurses switch it off. After that they brought cartoons and Disney movies. I watched all three Shrek movies and A Shark’s Tale. My left eye was still blurry so I covered it when I watched, and my left ear would bleed so I had to keep putting in cotton-wool balls. One day I asked a nurse, ‘What is this lump?’ placing her hand on my tummy. My stomach was big and hard and I didn’t know why.
‘It’s the top of your skull,’ she replied. I was shocked.
After I started to speak I also walked again for the first time. I hadn’t felt any problem with my arms or legs in bed apart from my left hand which was stiff because the bullet had ended up by my shoulder so I didn’t realise I couldn’t walk properly. My first few steps were such hard work it felt like I’d run a hundred kilometres. The doctors told me I would be fine; I just needed lots of physiotherapy to get my muscles working again.
One day another Fiona came, Fiona Alexander, who told me she was in charge of the hospital press office. I thought this was funny. I couldn’t imagine Swat Central Hospital having a press office. Until she came I had no idea of the attention I’d attracted. When I was flown from Pakistan there was supposed to be a news blackout, but photographs were leaked from Pakistan of me leaving and saying I was going to the UK, and the media soon found out my destination was Birmingham. A Sky News helicopter was soon circling above, and as many as 250 journalists came to the hospital from as far away as Australia and Japan. Fiona Alexander had spent twenty years as a journalist herself, and had been editor of the Birmingham Post, so she knew exactly how to feed them material and stop them trying to get in. The hospital started giving daily news briefings on my condition.
People just turned up wanting to see me – government ministers, diplomats, politicians, even an envoy from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Most brought bouquets, some of them exquisitely beautiful. One day Fiona Alexander brought me a bag of cards and toys and pictures. It was Eid ul-Azha, ‘Big Eid’, our main religious holiday, so I thought maybe some Muslims had sent them. Then I saw the postage dates, from 10 October, 11 October, days before, and I realised it was nothing to do with Eid. They were from people all over the world wishing me a speedy recovery, many of them schoolchildren. I was astonished and Fiona laughed. ‘You haven’t seen anything yet.’ She told me there were sacks and sacks more, about 8,000 cards in total, many just addressed, ‘Malala, Birmingham Hospital’. One was even addressed, ‘The Girl Shot in the Head, Birmingham’, yet it had got there. There were offers to adopt me as if I had no family and even a marriage proposal.
Rehanna told me that thousands and millions of people and children around the world had supported me and prayed for me. Then I realised that people had saved my life. I had been spared for a reason. People had sent other presents too. There were boxes and boxes of chocolates and teddy bears of every shape and size. Most precious of all perhaps was the parcel that came from Benazir Bhutto’s children Bilawal and Bakhtawar. Inside were two shawls that had belonged to their late mother. I buried my nose in them to try and smell her perfume. Later I found a long black hair on one of them, which made it even more special.
I realised what the Taliban had done was make my campaign global. While I was lying in that bed waiting to take my first steps in a new world, Gordon Brown, the UN special envoy for education and former prime minister of Britain, had launched a petition under the slogan ‘I am Malala’ to demand no child be denied schooling by 2015. There were messages from heads of state and ministers and movie stars and one from the granddaughter of Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British governor of our province. She said she was ashamed at not being able to read and write Pashto although her grandfather had been fluent. Beyoncé had written me a card and posted a photo of it on Facebook, Selena Gomez had tweeted about me and Madonna had dedicated a song. There was even a message from my favourite actress and social activist, Angelina Jolie – I couldn’t wait to tell Moniba.