It was nightfall by the time we reached Besham as many roads were blocked. We spent the night in a cheap dirty hotel while my cousin tried to arrange a van to take us to Shangla. A man came near my mother and she took her shoe off and hit him once then twice and he ran away. She had hit him so hard that when she looked at the shoe it was broken. I always knew my mother was a strong woman but I looked at her with new respect.
It was not easy to get from Besham to our village and we had to walk twenty-five kilometres carrying all our things. At one point we were stopped by the army, who told us we could go no further and must turn back. ‘Our home is in Shangla. Where will we go?’ we begged. My grandmother started crying and saying her life had never been so bad. Finally, they let us through. The army and their machine guns were everywhere. Because of the curfew and the checkpoints there was not one other vehicle on the road that didn’t belong to the military. We were afraid that the army wouldn’t know who we were and would shoot us.
When we reached the village our family was astonished to see us. Everyone believed the Taliban would return to Shangla so they couldn’t understand why we hadn’t remained in Mardan.
We stayed in my mother’s village, Karshat, with my uncle Faiz Mohammad and his family. We had to borrow clothes from our relatives as we hadn’t brought much. I was happy to be with my cousin Sumbul, who is a year older than me. Once we were settled I started going to school with her. I was in Year 6 but started in Year 7 to be with Sumbul. There were only three girls in that year as most of the village girls of that age do not go to school, so we were taught with boys as they didn’t have enough room or staff to teach just three girls separately. I was different to the other girls as I didn’t cover my face and I used to talk to every teacher and ask questions. But I tried to be obedient and polite, always saying, ‘Yes, sir.’
It took over half an hour to walk to school, and because I am bad at getting up in the morning the second day we were late. I was shocked when the teacher hit my hand with a stick to punish me, but then decided that at least it meant they were accepting me and not treating me differently. My uncle even gave me pocket money to buy snacks at school – they sold cucumber and watermelon not sweets and crisps like in Mingora.
One day at school there was a parents’ day and prize-giving ceremony, and all the boys were encouraged to make speeches. Some of the girls also took part, but not in public. Instead we spoke into a microphone in our classrooms and our voices were then projected into the main hall. But I was used to speaking in public so I came out and in front of all the boys I recited one naat, a poem in which I praised the Prophet. Then I asked the teacher if I could read some more poetry. I read a poem about working hard to achieve your heart’s desires. ‘A diamond must be cut many times before it yields even a tiny jewel,’ I said. After that I spoke of my namesake, Malalai of Maiwand, who had strength and power equal to hundreds and thousands of brave men because her few lines of poetry changed everything so the British were defeated.
People in the audience seemed surprised and I wondered whether they thought I was showing off or whether they were asking themselves why I wasn’t wearing a veil.
It was nice being with my cousins but I missed my books. I kept thinking of my school bag at home with copies of Oliver Twist and Romeo and Juliet waiting to be read and the Ugly Betty DVDs on the shelf. But now we were living our own drama. We had been so happy, then something very bad had come into our lives and we were now waiting for our happy ending. When I complained about my books my brothers whined about their chickens.
We’d heard on the radio that the army had started the battle for Mingora. They had parachuted in soldiers and there had been hand-to-hand fighting in the streets. The Taliban were using hotels and government buildings as bunkers. After four days the military took three squares including Green Chowk, where the Taliban used to display the beheaded bodies of their victims. Then they captured the airport and in a week they had taken back the city.
We continued to worry about my father. In Shangla it was hard to find a mobile phone signal. We had to climb onto a huge boulder in a field, and even then we rarely had more than one bar of reception so we hardly ever spoke to him. But after we had been in Shangla for about six weeks, my father said we could travel to Peshawar, where he had been staying in one room with three friends.
It was very emotional to see him again. Then, a complete family once more, we travelled down to Islamabad, where we stayed with the family of Shiza, the lady who had called us from Stanford. While we were there we heard that Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the American envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, was holding a meeting in the Serena Hotel about the conflict, and my father and I managed to get inside.