That evening my father received a call from the family who had been sharing our home for the last eighteen months. Their previous home had a mud roof which leaked in the rain and we had two spare rooms so they stayed with us for a nominal rent and their children went to our school for free. They had three children, and we liked them living with us as we all played cops and robbers on the roof. They told my father that the police had turned up at the house and demanded to know whether we had received any threats. When my father heard this, he called the deputy superintendent, who asked him the same thing. My father asked, ‘Why, have you any information?’ The officer asked to see my father when we were back in Swat.
After that my father was restless and could not enjoy Karachi. I could see my mother and father were both very upset. I knew my mother was still mourning my aunt and they had been feeling uneasy about me receiving so many awards, but it seemed to be about more than that. ‘Why are you like this?’ I asked. ‘You’re worried about something but you’re not telling us.’
Then they told me about the call from home and that they were taking the threats seriously. I don’t know why, but hearing I was being targeted did not worry me. It seemed to me that everyone knows they will die one day. My feeling was that nobody can stop death; it doesn’t matter if it comes from a talib or cancer. So I should do whatever I want to do.
‘Maybe we should stop our campaigning, Jani, and go into hibernation for a time,’ said my father.
‘How can we do that?’ I replied. ‘You were the one who said if we believe in something greater than our lives, then our voices will only multiply even if we are dead. We can’t disown our campaign!’
People were asking me to speak at events. How could I refuse, saying there was a security problem? We couldn’t do that, especially not as proud Pashtuns. My father always says that heroism is in the Pashtun DNA.
Still, it was with a heavy heart that we returned to Swat. When my father went to the police they showed him a file on me. They told him that my national and international profile meant I had attracted attention and death threats from the Taliban and that I needed protection. They offered us guards but my father was reluctant. Many elders in Swat had been killed despite having bodyguards and the Punjab governor had been killed by his own bodyguard. He also thought armed guards would alarm the parents of the students at school, and he didn’t want to put others at risk. When he had had threats before he always said, ‘Let them kill me but I’ll be killed alone.’
He suggested sending me to boarding school in Abbottabad like Khushal, but I didn’t want to go. He also met the local army colonel, who said being in college in Abbottabad would not really be any safer and that as long as I kept a low profile we would be OK in Swat. So when the government of KPK offered to make me a peace ambassador, my father said it was better to refuse.
At home I started bolting the main gate of our house at night. ‘She smells the threat,’ my mother told my father. He was very unhappy. He kept telling me to draw the curtains in my room at night, but I would not.
‘Aba, this is a very strange situation,’ I told him. ‘When there was Talibanisation we were safe; now there are no Taliban we are unsafe.’
‘Yes, Malala,’ he replied. ‘Now the Talibanisation is especially for us, for those like you and me who continue to speak out. The rest of Swat is OK. The rickshaw drivers, the shopkeepers are all safe. This is Talibanisation for particular people, and we are among them.’
There was another downside to receiving those awards – I was missing a lot of school. After the exams in March the cup that went into my new cabinet was for second place.
19
A Private Talibanisation
‘LET’S PRETEND IT’S a Twilight movie and that we’re vampires in the forest,’ I said to Moniba. We were on a school trip to Marghazar, a beautiful green valley where the air is cool, and there is a tall mountain and a crystal-clear river where we were planning to have a picnic. Nearby was the White Palace Hotel, which used to be the wali’s summer residence.
It was April 2012, the month after our exams so we were all feeling relaxed. We were a group of about seventy girls. Our teachers and my parents were there too. My father had hired three Flying Coaches but we could not all fit in, so five of us – me, Moniba and three other girls – were in the dyna, the school van. It wasn’t very comfortable, especially because we also had giant pots of chicken and rice on the floor for the picnic, but it was only half an hour’s drive. We had fun, singing songs on the way there. Moniba was looking very beautiful, her skin porcelain-pale. ‘What skin cream are you using?’ I asked her.
‘The same one you’re using,’ she replied.
I knew that could not be true. ‘No. Look at my dark skin and look at yours!’
We visited the White Palace and saw where the Queen had slept and the gardens of beautiful flowers. Sadly we could not see the wali’s room as it had been damaged by the floods.