Adam took us to Islamabad. It was the first time I had ever visited. Islamabad was a beautiful place with nice white bungalows and broad roads, though it has none of the natural beauty of Swat. We saw the Red Mosque where the siege had taken place, the wide, wide Constitution Avenue leading to the white-colonnaded buildings of the Parliament House and the Presidency, where Zardari now lived. General Musharraf was in exile in London.
We went to shops where I bought school books and Adam bought me DVDs of American TV programmes like Ugly Betty, which was about a girl with big braces and a big heart. I loved it and dreamed of one day going to New York and working on a magazine like her. We visited the Lok Virsa museum, and it was a joy to celebrate our national heritage once again. Our own museum in Swat had closed. On the steps outside an old man was selling popcorn. He was a Pashtun like us, and when my father asked if he was from Islamabad he replied, ‘Do you think Islamabad can ever belong to us Pashtuns?’ He said he came from Mohmand, one of the tribal areas, but had to flee because of a military operation. I saw tears in my parents’ eyes.
Lots of buildings were surrounded by concrete blocks, and there were checkpoints for incoming vehicles to guard against suicide bombs. When our bus hit a pothole on the way back my brother Khushal, who had been asleep, jerked awake. ‘Was that a bomb blast?’ he asked. This was the fear that filled our daily lives. Any small disturbance or noise could be a bomb or gunfire.
On our short trips we forgot our troubles in Swat. But we returned to the threats and danger as we entered our valley once again. Even so, Swat was our home and we were not ready to leave it.
Back in Mingora the first thing I saw when I opened my wardrobe was my uniform, school bag and geometry set. I felt so sad. The visit to Islamabad had been a lovely break, but this was my reality now.
14
A Funny Kind of Peace
WHEN MY BROTHERS’ schools reopened after the winter break, Khushal said he would rather stay at home like me. I was cross. ‘You don’t realise how lucky you are!’ I told him. It felt strange to have no school. We didn’t even have a television set as someone had stolen ours while we were in Islamabad, using my father’s ‘getaway’ ladder to get inside.
Someone gave me a copy of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a fable about a shepherd boy who travels to the Pyramids in search of treasure when all the time it’s at home. I loved that book and read it over and over again. ‘When you want something all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it,’ it says. I don’t think that Paulo Coelho had come across the Taliban or our useless politicians.
What I didn’t know was that Hai Kakar was holding secret talks with Fazlullah and his commanders. He had got to know them in interviews, and was urging them to rethink their ban on girls’ education.
‘Listen, Maulana,’ he told Fazlullah. ‘You killed people, you slaughtered people, you beheaded people, you destroyed schools and still there was no protest in Pakistan. But when you banned girls’ education people spoke out. Even the Pakistan media, which has been so soft on you till now, is outraged.’
The pressure from the whole country worked, and Fazlullah agreed to lift the ban for girls up to ten years old – Year 4. I was in Year 5 and some of us pretended we were younger than we were. We started going to school again, dressed in ordinary clothes and hiding our books under our shawls. It was risky but it was the only ambition I had back then. We were lucky too that Madam Maryam was brave and resisted the pressure to stop working. She had known my father since she was ten and they trusted each other completely – she used to signal to him to wind up when he spoke for too long, which was often!
‘The secret school is our silent protest,’ she told us.
I didn’t write anything about it in my diary. If they had caught us they would have flogged or even slaughtered us as they had Shabana. Some people are afraid of ghosts, some of spiders or snakes – in those days we were afraid of our fellow human beings.
On the way to school I sometimes saw the Taliban with their caps and long dirty hair. Most of the time they hid their faces. They were awkward, horrible-looking. The streets of Mingora were very empty as a third of the inhabitants had left the valley. My father said you couldn’t really blame people for leaving as the government had no power. There were now 12,000 army troops in the region – four times as many as their estimates of the Taliban – along with tanks, helicopters and sophisticated weapons. Yet seventy per cent of Swat was under Taliban control.