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could hear. On Saturday, 2 February I was back in QEH to be operated on – this time by a woman.
Her name was Anwen White. First she removed the skull bone from my tummy, but after looking at
it decided not to put it back as it had not kept well and there was a risk of infection. Instead she did
something called a titanium cranioplasty (I now know lots of medical terms!) and fitted a specially
moulded titanium plate in my head with eight screws to do the job of a skull and protect my brain.
While I was in surgery Mr Irving, the surgeon who had repaired my nerve, also had a solution for
my damaged left eardrum. He put a small electronic device called a cochlear implant inside my head
near the ear and told me that in a month they would fit the external part on my head, and then I should
be able to hear. I was in theatre five hours and I’d had three operations, but I didn’t feel like I’d had
major surgery and was back in the apartment within five days. A few weeks later when the receiver
was fitted behind my ear, my left ear heard beep beep for the first time. To start with, everything was
like a robot sound, but soon it was getting better and better.
We human beings don’t realise how great God is. He has given us an extraordinary brain and a
sensitive loving heart. He has blessed us with two lips to talk and express our feelings, two eyes which
see a world of colours and beauty, two feet which walk on the road of life, two hands to work for us,
a nose which smells the beauty of fragrance, and two ears to hear the words of love. As I found with
my ear, no one knows how much power they have in their each and every organ until they lose one.
I thank Allah for the hard-working doctors, for my recovery and for sending us to this world where
we may struggle for our survival. Some people choose good ways and some choose bad ways. One
person’s bullet hit me. It swelled my brain, stole my hearing and cut the nerve of the left side of my
face in the space of a second. And after that one second there were millions of people praying for my
life and talented doctors who gave me my own body back. I was a good girl. In my heart I had only
the desire to help people. It wasn’t about the awards or the money. I always prayed to God, ‘I want to
help people and please help me to do that.’
A talib fires three shots at point-blank range at three girls in a van and doesn’t kill any of them.
This seems an unlikely story, and people say I have made a miraculous recovery. My friend Shazia,
who was hit twice, was offered a scholarship at Atlantic College in Wales so has also come to the UK
for schooling, and I hope Kainat will too. I know God stopped me from going to the grave. It feels
like this life is a second life. People prayed to God to spare me, and I was spared for a reason – to use
my life for helping people. When people talk about the way I was shot and what happened I think it’s
the story of Malala, ‘a girl shot by the Taliban’; I don’t feel it’s a story about me at all.
EPILOGUE
One Child, One Teacher, One Book, One Pen . . .
Birmingham, August 2013
IN MARCH WE moved from the apartment to a rented house on a leafy street, but it feels as if we are
camping in it. All our belongings are still in Swat. Everywhere there are cardboard boxes full of the
kind letters and cards that people send, and in one room stands a piano none of us can play. My mother