Birmingham Awakening Part 5 Chapters 24 to 25 PDF

## Part Five ### A New Life, Far from Home ### 24. A Place Called Birmingham I woke up on 16 October to a lot of people standing around looking at me. They all had four eyes, two noses, and two mouths. I blinked, but it did no good. I was seeing everything in double. The first thing I thought wa...

## Part Five ### A New Life, Far from Home ### 24. A Place Called Birmingham I woke up on 16 October to a lot of people standing around looking at me. They all had four eyes, two noses, and two mouths. I blinked, but it did no good. I was seeing everything in double. The first thing I thought was Thank God, I'm not dead. But I had no idea where I was or who these people were. They were speaking English, although they all seemed to be from different countries. I tried to talk, since I could speak English, but no sound came out. There seemed to be a tube of some kind in my throat, a tube that had stolen my voice. I was in a high bed, and all around me, complicated machines beeped and purred. I understood then. I was in a hospital. My heart clenched in panic. If I was in a hospital, where were my parents? Was my father hurt? Was he alive? Something had happened to me, I knew. But I was sure something had happened to my father as well. A nice woman wearing a headscarf came to my side. She told me that her name was Rehanah and that she was the Muslim chaplain. She began to pray in Urdu. Instantly I felt calm, comforted, and safe. As I listened to the beautiful, soothing words of the Holy Quran, I closed my eyes and drifted off. When I opened my eyes next, I saw that I was in a green room with no windows and very bright lights. The nice Muslim woman was gone; a doctor and a nurse were in her place. The doctor spoke to me in Urdu. His voice was oddly muffled, as if he were speaking from a great distance. He told me that I was safe and that he had brought me from Pakistan. I tried to talk but couldn't, so I tried to trace letters on my hand, thinking I could spell out a question. The nurse left and came back with a piece of paper and a pen for me, but I couldn't write properly. I wanted to give them my father's number, I wanted to write a question, but everything came out all jumbled. So the nurse wrote the alphabet on a piece of paper and I pointed at letters. The first word I spelled out was father. Then country. Where was my father? I wanted to know. And what country was this? The doctor's voice was still hard to hear, but he seemed to be saying I was in a place called Birmingham. I didn't know where that was. Only later did I figure out it was in England. He hadn't said anything about my father. Why not? Something had happened to him. That was the only reason there could be. I had it in my head that this doctor had found me on the roadside and that he didn't know my father was also hurt. Or that he didn't know how to find my father. I wanted to give him my father's phone number so he could tell him, "Your daughter is here.” I moved ever so slightly to spell out father again, and a blinding pain cut through my head. It was as if a hundred razors were inside my skull, clattering and rattling around. I tried to breathe. Then the nurse leaned down and dabbed at my left ear with a piece of gauze, and blood came away on the cloth. My ear was bleeding. What did that mean? I tried to lift my hand to touch it, but I noticed, as if from a distance, that my hand did not seem to be working properly. What had happened to me? Nurses and doctors came in and out. No one told me anything. Instead, they asked me questions. I nodded and shook my head in reply. They asked if I knew my name. I nodded. They asked if I could move my left hand. I shook my head. They had so many questions, and yet they wouldn't answer mine. It was all too much. The questions, the pain in my head, the worry about my father. When I closed my eyes, I didn't see darkness, only a bright light, as if the sun were shining under my eyelids. I was fading in and out, but I never felt as if I had slept. There was only the long stretches of being awake, my head filled with pain and questions, and then not. The room I was in was in the ICU and didn't have windows, so I never knew if it was day or night. I knew only that no one had answered my constant question: Where was my father? But eventually a new question joined it when I looked around the room at all the complicated medical equipment: Who would pay for this? A lady walked in and told me her name was Dr. Fiona Reynolds. She spoke to me as if we were old friends. She handed me a green teddy bear—which I thought was an odd color for it—and a pink notebook. The first thing I wrote was Thank you. Then I wrote, Why I have no father? And My father has no money. Who will pay for this? "Your father is safe," she said. “He is in Pakistan. Don't worry about the payment." If my father was safe, why wasn't he here? And where was my mother? I had more questions for Dr. Fiona, but the words I needed would not come to my mind. She seemed to understand. "Something bad happened to you," she said. "But you're safe now." What had happened? I tried to remember. All sorts of images floated through my head. I didn't know what was real and what was a dream. I am on a bus with my father, and two men shoot us. I see a crowd gathered around me as I lie on a bed, or a stretcher. I can't see my father, and I'm trying to cry out, Where is aba, where is my father? But I can't speak. And maybe I see him and I feel joy and relief. I feel someone hovering over me, a man, whose hands are poised above my neck, ready to choke me. I am on a stretcher, and my father is reaching out to me. I am trying to wake up, to go to school, but I can't. Then I see my school and my friends and I can't reach them. I see a man in black pointing a gun at me. I see doctors trying to stick a tube in my throat. -I am telling myself, You are dead. But then I realize that the angel has not yet come to ask the questions a Muslim hears after death: Who is your God? Who is your prophet? I realize then I can't be dead, and I fight and struggle and kick and try to wake from this terrible nightmare. These images seemed very real, yet I knew they couldn't all be. But somehow I had ended up in this place called Birmingham, in a room full of machines, with only the green teddy bear at my side. ### 25. Problems, Solutions In those first days of being in the hospital, my mind drifted in and out of a dreamworld. I thought I had been shot, but I wasn't sure—were those dreams or memories? I couldn't remember words, either. I wrote to the nurses asking for a wire to clean my teeth. I had a pounding, nonstop headache; I was seeing double; I could hardly hear; I couldn't move my left arm or close my left eye—but for some reason all I wanted to do was floss my teeth. "Your teeth are fine," the doctors said. "But your tongue has gone numb." I tried to shake my head. No, I wanted to explain, there was something stuck in my teeth. But shaking my head set off the razor-blade pain, so I held still. I couldn't convince them. And they couldn't convince me. Then I saw that my green teddy bear was gone. A white one had taken its place. I felt a special affection for the green teddy bear, since he was by my side that first day; he helped me. I took the notebook and wrote, Where's the green teddy? No one gave me the answer I wanted. They said it was the same teddy that had been by my side the first day. The lights and walls had given him a green glow, but the teddy was white, they said. He was always white. Meanwhile, the bright lights in my room were excruciating, like hot white daggers to my eyes, especially my poor left eye, which wouldn't close. Stop lights, I begged in my notebook. The nurses did their best to darken the room, but as soon as I got some relief from the pain, my thoughts circled back to my father. My father? I wrote again in the notebook. When you can't move, you can't hear, and you can't see properly, your mind spins and spins—and my mind kept going back to the same question. Where was my father? Every time a different doctor or nurse came into my room to change my blanket or check my eyesight, I handed them the notebook and pointed to the questions about my father. They all said not to worry. But I did worry. I couldn't stop. I was also obsessed with how we would pay for all this. Whenever I saw the doctors and nurses talking to each other, I thought for sure that they were saying, “Malala doesn't have any money. Malala can't pay for her treatment.” There was one doctor who always looked sad, so I wrote him a note. Why are you sad? I asked. I thought it was because he knew I couldn't pay. But he replied, “I'm not sad.” Who will pay? I wrote. We don't have any money. “Don't worry. Your government will pay," he said. After that, he always smiled when he saw me. Then a new worry seized me. Did my parents know where I was? Maybe they were wandering the streets and alleys of Mingora looking for me. But I am a hopeful person, and therefore when I see problems, I will always think about solutions. So I thought I would go to the hospital's reception desk and ask for a phone so I could call my parents. But then I realized I didn't have the money to pay for such an expensive call. I didn't even know how to dial Pakistan from here. Then I thought, I need to go out and start working to earn money so I can buy a phone and call my family so we can all be together again. Dr. Fiona came into my room and handed me a newspaper clipping. It was a picture of my father standing next to the Pakistan army's chief of staff. My father was alive! And in the background of the photo was Atal! I smiled. Something bad had happened to me. But I was alive and now I knew my father was alive. That was a reason to be thankful. Then I noticed a figure in a shawl sitting in the back of the photo near my brother. I could just make out her feet. Those were my mother's feet! That's my mother! I wrote to Dr. Fiona. That night I slept a bit better. It was a sleep full of strange dreams. Dreams of being on a bed surrounded by lots of people. Dreams of being shot. Dreams of a bomb exploding. I would wake up and look around for the green teddy. But always it was just the white one. Now that I knew my family was safe, I spent all my time worrying about how we would pay for my treatment. Obviously, my father was at home because he was selling our few possessions to pay for all this. Our house was rented; the school building was, too. Even if he sold everything we owned, it would never be enough. Was he borrowing money? Was he calling on his friends to ask for a loan? Later that day, the man who had spoken to me in Urdu, Dr. Javid Kayani, came in with his cell phone. "We're going to call your parents," he said matter-of-factly. “You won't cry," he said firmly. "You won't weep. You will be strong. We don't want your family to worry." I nodded. I hadn't cried once since I'd arrived. My left eye was constantly weeping, but I had not cried. After a series of blips and beeps, I heard my father's dear and familiar voice. "Jani?" he said. "How are you feeling, my jani?" I couldn't reply because of the tube in my throat. And I couldn't smile because my face was numb. But I was smiling inside, and I knew my father knew that. "I'll come soon," my father said. "Now have a rest, and in two days we will be there.” His voice was loud and bright. Maybe a little too bright. Then I realized: He had also been told not to cry.