Inside the helicopter I was vomiting blood. My father was horrified, thinking this meant I had internal bleeding. He was starting to lose hope. But then Maryam noticed me trying to wipe my mouth with my scarf. ‘Look, she is responding!’ she said. ‘That’s an excellent sign.’
When we landed in Peshawar, they assumed we’d be taken to Lady Reading Hospital, where there was a very good neurosurgeon called Dr Mumtaz who had been recommended. Instead they were alarmed to be taken to CMH, the Combined Military Hospital. CMH is a large sprawling brick hospital with 600 beds and dates from British rule. There was a lot of construction going on to build a new tower block. Peshawar is the gateway to the FATA and since the army went into those areas in 2004 to take on the militants, the hospital had been very busy tending wounded soldiers and victims of the frequent suicide bombs in and around the city. As in much of our country, there were concrete blocks and checkpoints all around CMH to protect it from suicide bombers.
I was rushed to the Intensive Care Unit, which is in a separate building. Above the nurses’ station the clock showed it was just after 5 p.m. I was wheeled into a glass-walled isolation unit and a nurse put me on a drip. In the next room was a soldier who had been horrifically burned in an IED attack and had a leg blown off. A young man came in and introduced himself as Colonel Junaid, a neurosurgeon. My father became even more disturbed. He didn’t think he looked like a doctor; he seemed so young. ‘Is she your daughter?’ asked the colonel. Maryam pretended to be my mother so she could come in.
Colonel Junaid examined me. I was conscious and restless but not speaking or aware of anything, my eyes fluttering. The colonel stitched the wound above my left brow where the bullet had entered, but he was surprised not to see any bullet in the scan. ‘If there is an entry there has to be an exit,’ he said. He palpated my spine and located the bullet lying next to my left shoulder blade. ‘She must have been stooping so her neck was bent when she was shot,’ he said.
They took me for another CT scan. Then the colonel called my father into his office, where he had the scans up on a screen. He told him that the scan in Swat had been done from only one angle, but this new scan showed the injury was more serious. ‘Look, Ziauddin,’ he said. ‘The CT scan shows the bullet went very close to the brain.’ He said particles of bone had damaged the brain membrane. ‘We can pray to God. Let’s wait and see,’ he said. ‘We’re not going to operate at this stage.’
My father became more agitated. In Swat the doctors had told him this was something simple, now it seemed very serious. And if it was serious why weren’t they operating? He felt uncomfortable in a military hospital. In our country, where the army has seized power so many times, people are often wary of the military, particularly those from Swat, where the army had taken so long to act against the Taliban. One of my father’s friends called him and said, ‘Get her moved from that hospital. We don’t want her to become shaheed millat [a martyr of the nation] like Liaquat Ali Khan.’ My father didn’t know what to do.
‘I’m confused,’ he told Colonel Junaid. ‘Why are we here? I thought we’d go to the civil hospital.’ Then he asked, ‘Please, can you bring in Dr Mumtaz?’
‘How would that look?’ replied Colonel Junaid who was, not surprisingly, offended.
Afterwards, we found out that despite his youthful appearance he had been a neurosurgeon for thirteen years and was the most experienced and decorated neurosurgeon in the Pakistani army. He had joined the military as a doctor because of their superior facilities, following in the footsteps of his uncle, who was also an army neurosurgeon. The Peshawar CMH was on the front line of the war on the Taliban and Junaid dealt with gunshot wounds and blasts every day. ‘I’ve treated thousands of Malalas,’ he later said.
But my father didn’t know that at the time and became very depressed. ‘Do whatever you think,’ he said. ‘You’re the doctor.’
The next few hours were a wait-and-see time, the nurses monitoring my heartbeat and vital signs. Occasionally I made a low grunt and moved my hand or fluttered my eyes. Then Maryam would say, ‘Malala, Malala.’ Once my eyes completely opened. ‘I never noticed before how beautiful her eyes are,’ said Maryam. I was restless and kept trying to get the monitor off my finger. ‘Don’t do that,’ Maryam said.
‘Miss, don’t tell me off,’ I whispered as if we were at school. Madam Maryam was a strict headmistress.
Late in the evening my mother came with Atal. They had made the four-hour journey by road, driven by my father’s friend Mohammad Farooq. Before she arrived Maryam had called to warn her, ‘When you see Malala don’t cry or shout. She can hear you even if you think she can’t.’ My father also called her and told her to prepare for the worst. He wanted to protect her.
When my mother arrived they hugged and held back tears. ‘Here is Atal,’ she told me. ‘He has come to see you.’