I was 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.
She arrived back in Peshawar on Thursday lunchtime. She told my father that I was to be airlifted to an army hospital in Rawalpindi which had the best intensive care. He couldn’t see how a child so sick could fly, but Dr. Fiona assured him that she did this all the time so not to worry. He asked her if there was any hope for me. “Had there been no hope I would not be here,” she replied. My father says that in that moment he could not hold back his tears.
Later that day a nurse came and put drops in my eyes. “Look, khaista,” said my mother. “Dr. Fiona is right because the nurses put eye drops in Malala’s eyes. They wouldn’t put drops in if there was no chance.” One of the other girls who had been shot, Shazia, had been moved to the same hospital and Fiona went to check on her. She told my father that Shazia was fine and had begged her, “Look after Malala!”
We were taken to the helipad by ambulance under high security with motorcycle outriders and flashing blue lights. The helicopter flight was one hour and fifteen minutes. Dr. Fiona hardly sat down; she was so busy the whole way with all the different equipment that it looked to my father as if she were fighting with it. She was doing what she had been doing for years. Half her work in the UK was moving critically ill children, the other half was treating them in intensive care. But she had never been in a situation quite like this. Not only was Peshawar dangerous for Westerners, but after googling me she realized this was no ordinary case. “If anything had happened to her it would have been blamed on the white woman,” she said afterward. “If she’d died I would have killed Pakistan’s Mother Teresa.”
As soon as we landed in Rawalpindi we were taken by ambulance with another military escort to a hospital called the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology. My father was alarmed—how would they know how to deal with head wounds? But Dr. Fiona assured him it had the best intensive care in Pakistan with state-of-the-art equipment and British-trained doctors. Her own nurses from Birmingham were there waiting and had explained to the cardiology nurses the specific procedures for dealing with head injuries. They spent the next three hours with me, swapping my antibiotics and my blood lines, as I seemed to be reacting badly to the blood transfusions. Finally they said I was stable.
The hospital had been put on complete lockdown. There was an entire battalion of soldiers guarding it and even snipers on the rooftops. No one was allowed in; doctors had to wear uniforms; patients could only be visited by close relatives, all of whom underwent strict security checks. An army major was assigned to my parents and followed them everywhere.
My father was scared and my uncle kept saying, “Be very careful—some of these people might be secret agents.” My family was given three rooms in the officers’ hostel. Everyone’s mobile phones were confiscated, which they said was for security reasons but may have also been to stop my father talking to the media. Any time my parents wanted to take the short walk from the hostel to the hospital they first had to be cleared via walkie-talkie, which took at least half an hour. They were even guarded as they crossed the hostel lawn to the dining hall. No visitors could get in—even when the prime minister came to see me he was not allowed inside. The security seemed astonishing, but over the last three years the Taliban had managed to infiltrate and attack even the most highly guarded military installations—the naval base at Mehran, the air force base in Kamra and the army headquarters just down the road.
We were all at risk from a Taliban attack. My father was told that even my brothers would not be spared. He was very concerned because at that time Khushal was still in Mingora, although later he was brought down to Rawalpindi to join them. There were no computers or Internet in the hostel, but a friendly cook, Yaseen Mama, used to bring my family the newspapers and whatever they needed. Yaseen told them he felt proud to prepare my family’s food. They were so touched by his kindness that they shared our story with him. He wanted to nourish them with food and ease their suffering. They had no appetite, so he would try to tempt them with ever more delicious dishes, custards and sweets. One mealtime Khushal said that the dining table felt empty with only the four of them. They felt incomplete without me.
It was in one of Yaseen’s newspapers that my father read for the first time some of the incredible international reaction to my shooting. It seemed like the whole world was outraged. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, called it “a heinous and cowardly act.” President Obama described the shooting as “reprehensible and disgusting and tragic.” But some of the reaction in Pakistan was not so positive. While some papers described me as a “peace icon,” others carried the usual conspiracy theories, some bloggers even questioning if I had really been shot. All sorts of stories were made up, particularly in the Urdu press, such as one that claimed I had criticized the growing of beards. One of the most vocal people against me was a female MP called Dr. Raheela Qazi from the religious Jamaat-e-Islami party. She called me an American stooge and showed a photograph of me sitting next to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke as evidence of me “hobnobbing with US military authority”!
Dr. Fiona was a great comfort to us. My mother speaks only Pashto so couldn’t understand anything she said, but Fiona would gesture with a thumbs-up when she came out of my room and say, “Good.” She became a messenger for my parents, not only a doctor. She would sit with them patiently and would then ask my father to explain every detail to my mother. My father was astonished and pleased—in our country few doctors bother explaining anything to an illiterate woman. They heard that offers were pouring in from overseas to treat me, including from America, where a top hospital called Johns Hopkins had offered free treatment. Individual Americans also offered to help, including Senator John Kerry, a rich man who had visited Pakistan many times, and Gabrielle Giffords, a congresswoman who had been shot in the head while meeting constituents at a shopping mall in Arizona. There were offers too from Germany, Singapore, the UAE and Britain.
There was no time to consult my mother or my father on what should happen to me. Besides, they were too traumatized to make decisions. All decisions were made by the army. General Kayani asked Dr. Javid whether I should be sent abroad or not. The army chief was spending a surprising amount of his time on the issue—Dr. Javid says they spent six hours discussing me! Perhaps more than any politician he understood the political implications if I did not survive. He was hoping to build a political consensus behind launching an all-out attack on the Taliban. But also those close to him say he is a compassionate man. His own father was just an ordinary soldier and died young, leaving him as the eldest son of eight to support his entire family. When he became army chief the first thing General Kayani did was improve housing, food rations and education for ordinary soldiers instead of officers.
Dr. Fiona said it was likely I would have a speech impediment and a weak right arm and right leg, so I would need extensive rehabilitation facilities, which Pakistan didn’t have. “If you’re serious about getting the best outcome possible, take her overseas,” she advised.
General Kayani was adamant that the Americans should not be involved because of the ongoing bad relations between the two countries after the Raymond Davis episode and the bin Laden raid, as well as the killing of some Pakistani soldiers at a border post by a US helicopter. Dr. Javid suggested Great Ormond Street in London, and specialist hospitals in Edinburgh and Glasgow. “Why not your own hospital?” General Kayani asked.
Dr. Javid had known this was coming. Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham is known for treating British soldiers wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its location outside the center of the city also offered privacy. He called his boss, Kevin Bolger, the hospital’s chief operating officer. He quickly agreed it was the right thing to do, although afterward he said, “None of us ever imagined how much it would take over the hospital.” Moving me—a foreign minor—to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was not a simple exercise, and Bolger soon found himself tangled in the hoops of British and Pakistani bureaucracy. Meanwhile time was ticking away. Although my condition had been stabilized it was felt that I needed to be moved within forty-eight hours, seventy-two at the most.
Finally the go-ahead was given and the doctors had to face the problem of how I was to be moved and who would pay for it. Dr. Javid suggested taking up an offer from the Royal Air Force, as they were used to transporting wounded soldiers from Afghanistan, but General Kayani refused. He called Dr. Javid for a late-night meeting at his house—the general keeps late hours—and explained, chain-smoking as usual, that he did not want any foreign military involved. There were already too many conspiracy theories floating around about my shooting, people saying I was a CIA agent and such things, and the army chief did not want to further fuel them. This left Dr. Javid in a difficult position. The British government had offered assistance but needed a formal request from the Pakistan government. But my government was reluctant to ask for fear of loss of face. Fortunately at this point the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates stepped in. They offered their private jet, which had its own on-board hospital. I was to be flown out of Pakistan for the first time in my life in the early hours of Monday, 15 October.
My parents had no idea of any of these negotiations though they knew discussions were under way to move me overseas. Naturally they assumed that wherever I was sent, they would accompany me. My mother and brothers had no passports or documentation. On Sunday afternoon my father was informed by the colonel that I would be leaving the next morning for the UK and only he was to accompany me, not my mother or my brothers. He was told there was a problem arranging their passports and that for security reasons he should not even tell the rest of my family he was going.
My father shares everything with my mother and there was no way he would keep such a thing a secret. He told her the news with a heavy heart. My mother was sitting with uncle Faiz Mohammad, who was furious and worried about her and my brothers’ security. “If she’s on her own with two boys in Mingora, anything could happen to them!”
My father called the colonel. “I have informed my family and they are very unhappy. I cannot leave them.” This caused a big problem because I was a minor so couldn’t be sent alone and many people got involved to try and convince my father to come with me, including Colonel Junaid, Dr. Javid and Dr. Fiona. My father does not respond well to being pushed and remained firm even though it was clear that by now he was creating havoc. He explained to Dr. Javid, “My daughter is now in safe hands and going to a safe country. I can’t leave my wife and sons alone here. They are at risk. What has happened to my daughter has happened and now she is in God’s hands. I am a father—my sons are as important to me as my daughter.”
Dr. Javid asked to see my father privately. “Are you sure this is the only reason you are not coming?” he asked. He wanted to make sure no one was pressuring him.
“My wife told me, ‘You can’t leave us,’” my father said. The doctor put a hand on his shoulder and reassured my father that I would be taken care of and he could trust him. “Isn’t it a miracle you all happened to be here when Malala was shot?” said my father.
“It is my belief God sends the solution first and the problem later,” replied Dr. Javid.
My father then signed an “in loco parentis” document making Dr. Fiona my guardian for the trip to the UK. My father was in tears as he gave her my passport and took her hand.
“Fiona, I trust you. Please take care of my daughter.”
Then my mother and father came to my bedside to say goodbye. It was around 11 p.m. when they saw me for the last time in Pakistan. I could not speak, my eyes were shut and it was only my breath that reassured them I was still alive. My mother cried, but my father tried to reassure her, as he felt I was now out of danger. All those deadlines they’d given at the beginning—when they said the next twenty-four hours were dangerous, forty-eight were crucial, seventy-two were critical—had passed without incident. The swelling had gone down and my blood levels had improved. My family trusted that Dr. Fiona and Dr. Javid would give me the best possible care.
When my family went back to their rooms sleep was slow in coming. Just after midnight someone knocked at their door. It was one of the colonels who had earlier tried to convince my father to leave my mother behind and travel to the UK. He told my father that he absolutely had to travel with me or I might not be taken at all.
“I told you last night the issue was resolved,” my father replied. “Why did you wake me? I’m not leaving my family.”
Once again, another official was called to talk to him. “You must go. You are her parent, and if you don’t accompany her she may not be accepted into the hospital in the UK,” he said.
“What’s done is done,” my father insisted. “I am not changing my mind. We will all follow in a few days when the documents are sorted out.”
The colonel then said, “Let’s go to the hospital, as there are other documents to sign.”
My father became suspicious. It was after midnight and he was scared. He didn’t want to go alone with the officials and insisted my mother come too. My father was so worried that for the whole time he repeated a verse of the Holy Quran over and over. It was from the story of Yunus who is swallowed by a whale like the story of Jonah in the Bible. This verse was recited by the prophet Yunus when he was in the tummy of the whale. It reassures us that there is a way out of even the worst trouble and danger if we keep faith.
When they got to the hospital the colonel told my father that if I was to be allowed to fly to the UK then there were other documents that needed to be signed. It was simple. My father had felt so uncomfortable and scared because of the secrecy of all the arrangements, the men in uniform everywhere and the vulnerability of our family, that he had panicked and blown the incident out of proportion. The whole episode had been a matter of botched bureaucracy.
When my parents finally got back to the hostel it was with a very heavy heart. My father did not want me to come around in a strange country without my family there. He was worried about how confused I would be. My last memory would be of the school bus, and he was distraught that I would feel abandoned by them.
I was taken away at 5 a.m. on Monday, 15 October under armed escort. The roads to the airport had been closed and there were snipers on the rooftops of the buildings lining the route. The UAE plane was waiting. I am told it is the height of luxury with a plush double bed, sixteen first-class seats and a mini-hospital at the back staffed with European nurses led by a German doctor. I am just sorry I wasn’t conscious to enjoy it. The plane flew to Abu Dhabi for refueling, then headed on to Birmingham, where it landed in the late afternoon.
In the hostel my parents waited. They assumed their passports and visas were being processed and they would join me in a few days. But they heard nothing. They had no phone and no access to a computer to check on my progress. The wait felt endless.