I am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban

Baba
wanted to pay, my father refused as he hadn’t done this for me. But 
Baba
was the only grandfather I
had as my mother’s father had died before I was born and we became close. My parents say I have
qualities of both grandfathers – humorous and wise like my mother’s father and vocal like my father’s
father! 
Baba
had grown soft and white-bearded in his old age and I loved going to visit him in the
village.
Whenever he saw me he would greet me with a song as he was still concerned about the sad
meaning of my name and wanted to lend some happiness to it: ‘
Malala Maiwand wala da. Pa tool
jehan ke da khushala da
,’ he sang. ‘Malala is of Maiwand and she’s the happiest person in the whole
world.’
We always went to the village for the Eid holidays. We would dress in our finest clothes and pile
into the Flying Coach, a minibus with brightly painted panels and jangling chains, and drive north to
Barkana, our family village in Shangla. Eid happens twice a year – Eid ul-Fitr or ‘Small Eid’ marks
the end of the Ramadan fasting month, and Eid ul-Azha or ‘Big Eid’ commemorates the Prophet
Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son Ismail to God. The dates of the feasts are announced by a
special panel of clerics who watch for the appearance of the crescent moon. As soon as we heard the
broadcast on the radio, we set off.
The night before we hardly slept because we were so excited. The journey usually took about five
hours as long as the road had not been washed away by rains or landslides, and the Flying Coach left
early in the morning. We struggled to Mingora bus station, our bags laden with gifts for our family –
embroidered shawls and boxes of rose and pistachio sweets as well as medicine they could not get in
the village. Some people took sacks of sugar and flour, and most of the baggage was tied to the top of
the bus in a towering pile. Then we crammed in, fighting over the window seats even though the panes
were so encrusted with dirt it was hard to see out of them. The sides of Swat buses are painted with
scenes of bright pink and yellow flowers, neon-orange tigers and snowy mountains. My brothers liked
it if we got one with F-16 fighter jets or nuclear missiles, though my father said if our politicians
hadn’t spent so much money on building an atomic bomb we might have had enough for schools.
We drove out of the bazaar, past the grinning red mouth signs for dentists, the carts stacked with
wooden cages crammed with beady-eyed white chickens with scarlet beaks, and jewellery stores
with windows full of gold wedding bangles. The last few shops as we headed north out of Mingora
were wooden shacks that seemed to lean on each other, in front of which were piles of reconditioned
tyres for the bad roads ahead. Then we were on the main road built by the last wali, which follows
the wide Swat River on the left and hugs the cliffs to the right with their emerald mines. Overlooking
the river were tourist restaurants with big glass windows we had never been to. On the road we
passed dusty-faced children bent double with huge bundles of grass on their backs and men leading

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flocks of shaggy goats that wandered hither and thither.
As we drove on, the landscape changed to paddy fields of deep lush green that smelt so fresh and
orchards of apricot and fig trees. Occasionally we passed small marble works over streams which
ran milky white with the discharge of chemicals. This made my father cross. ‘Look at what these
criminals are doing to pollute our beautiful valley,’ he always said. The road left the river and wound
up through narrow passes over steep fir-clad heights, higher and higher, until our ears popped. On top
of some of the peaks were ruins where vultures circled, the remains of forts built by the first wali.
The bus strained and laboured, the driver cursing as trucks overtook us on blind bends with steep
drops below. My brothers loved this, and they would taunt me and my mother by pointing out the
wreckage of vehicles on the mountainside.
Finally we made it up onto Sky Turn, the gateway to Shangla Top, a mountain pass which feels as if
it’s on top of the world. Up there we were higher than the rocky peaks all around us. In the far
distance we could see the snows of Malam Jabba, our ski resort. By the roadside were fresh springs
and waterfalls, and when we stopped for a break and to drink some tea, the air was clean and fragrant
with cedar and pine. We breathed it into our lungs greedily. Shangla is all mountain, mountain,
mountain and just a small sky. After this the road winds back down for a while then follows the
Ghwurban River and peters out into a rocky track. The only way to cross the river is by rope bridges
or on a pulley system by which people swing themselves across in a metal box. Foreigners call them
suicide bridges but we loved them.
If you look at a map of Swat you’ll see it is one long valley with little valleys we call