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 excited she called my father. ‘For the first time I am happy,’ she said. But it was ice cold and so we went into the café and had delicious tea and cakes, something called a ‘cream tea’.

Two days after that I had my first visitor from outside the family – the president of Pakistan, Asif Zardari. The hospital did not want him to come as they knew it would mean a media frenzy, but it was difficult for my father to refuse. Not only was Mr Zardari our head of state but he had said the government would pay all my medical bills, which would end up being around £200,000. They had also rented an apartment for my parents in the centre of Birmingham so they could move out of the hostel. The visit was on Saturday, 8 December, and the whole thing was like something out of a James Bond movie.

There were a lot of journalists gathered outside from early on, who naturally assumed the president would be brought to me in the hospital. Instead I was wrapped up in a big purple parka with a hood, taken down through the staff entrance and driven to the hospital offices. We drove right past journalists and photographers, some of whom were up in trees, and they did not even notice. Then I sat and waited in an office, playing a game called Elf Bowling on the computer and beating my brother Atal even though it was the first time I had played it. When Zardari and his party arrived in two cars they were brought in through the back. He came with about ten people including his chief of staff, his military secretary and the Pakistan High Commissioner in London, who had taken over from Dr Fiona as my official guardian in the UK till my parents arrived.

The president was first briefed by doctors not to mention my face. Then he came in to see me with his youngest daughter Asifa, who is a few years older than me. They brought me a bouquet of flowers. He touched my head, which is our tradition, but my father was worried as I had nothing but skin, no bone to protect my brain, and my head beneath the shawl was concave. Afterwards the president sat with my father, who told him that we were fortunate I had been brought to the UK. ‘She might have survived in Pakistan but she wouldn’t have had the rehabilitation and would have been disfigured,’ he said. ‘Now her smile will return.’

Mr Zardari told the high commissioner to give my father a post as education attaché so he would have a salary to live on and a diplomatic passport so he would not need to seek asylum to stay in the UK. My father was relieved as he was wondering how he would pay for things. Gordon Brown, in his UN role, had also asked him to be his adviser, an unpaid position, and the president said that was fine; he could be both. After the meeting Mr Zardari described me to the media as ‘a remarkable girl and a credit to Pakistan’. But still not everyone in Pakistan was so positive. Though my father had tried to keep it from me I knew some people were saying he had shot me, or that I wasn’t shot at all, and we had staged it so we could live overseas.

The new year of 2013 was a happy one when I was discharged from hospital in early January finally to live with my family again. The Pakistan High Commission had rented two serviced apartments for us in a building in a modern square in the centre of Birmingham. The apartments were on the tenth floor, which was higher than any of us had ever been before. I teased my mother, as after the earthquake when we were in a three-storey building she said she would never again live in an apartment block. My father told me that when they arrived she had been so scared that she had said, ‘I will die in this lift!’

We were so happy to be a family again. My brother Khushal was as annoying as always. The boys were bored cooped up waiting for me to recover, away from school and their friends, though Atal was excited by everything new. I quickly realised I could treat them how I liked and I wouldn’t get told off. It was a cold winter, and as I watched the snow falling outside through the big glass windows I wished I could run around and chase the snowflakes like we used to back home. Sometimes we went for walks to build up my strength though I tired easily.