Displaced: A Twelfth Birthday in War-Torn Swat (PDF)

## Displaced "No Pashtun leaves his land of his own sweet will. Either he leaves from poverty or he leaves for love." So goes a famous Pashtun tapa, a couplet my grandmother taught me. Now we were being driven out by a force the writer could never have imagined - the Taliban. I stood on our roof l...

## Displaced "No Pashtun leaves his land of his own sweet will. Either he leaves from poverty or he leaves for love." So goes a famous Pashtun tapa, a couplet my grandmother taught me. Now we were being driven out by a force the writer could never have imagined - the Taliban. I stood on our roof looking at the mountains, at the alleys where we used to play cricket, the apricot trees coming into bloom. I tried to memorize every detail in case I never saw my home again. Then I went downstairs and tried to pack. It was chaos. My brothers were pleading with my mother to take their pet chicks with them, and my cousin's wife was in the kitchen crying. When I saw her crying, I started crying, too. My heart was full, but sometimes it's not until someone else cries that my tears feel free to flow. I ran into my room and tried to think about what I could take with me. I was traveling in Safina's family's car, so there wasn't much room. (The rest of my family was going in a car with my father's friend.) I packed my schoolbag first, with my books and papers. I took a last look at my trophies and said good-bye to them. Then I started stuffing clothes into a bag. In my haste, I took the pants from one set of shalwar kamiz and the top from another, so I ended up with things that didn't match. When I closed the door to my room for possibly the last time and walked into the kitchen, I saw my mother telling Atal again that we couldn't take the chicks. "What if they make a mess in the car?" she tried. But Atal would not be swayed and suggested we buy them nappies to wear. Poor Atal. He was only five years old and already he'd known two wars in his short life. He was a child; the army and the Taliban were on a collision course with our home and all he cared about were his little birds. They couldn't go with us, of course, and when my mother said that they would have to stay behind with an extra ration of food and water, Atal burst into tears. Then, when she said I would have to leave my schoolbooks behind, I nearly cried, too. I loved school, and all I cared about were my books! We were children, after all, children with childish concerns, even with a war on the way. I hid my books in a bag in our guest room, where it seemed safest, and whispered some Quranic verses over the books to protect them. Then the whole family gathered together and said good-bye to our house. We said some prayers and put our sweet home in God's protection. Outside, the streets were choked with traffic. Cars and rickshaws, mule carts and trucks—all packed with people and their suitcases, bags of rice, and bedrolls. There were motorbikes with entire families balanced on them—and other people running down the street with just the clothes on their backs. Few people knew where they were going; they just knew they had to leave. Two million people were fleeing their homes. It was the biggest exodus in Pashtun history. My mother and my brothers and I were going to stay with our family in Shangla. But our father said his duty was to go to Peshawar to warn people about what was going on. None of us liked this idea, especially my mother, but we understood. It was agreed that he would travel part of the way with us, then we would leave him in Peshawar. The trip, which usually took a few hours, took two days. First we had to go out of our way because that's where Safina's family and my father's friend were going, and we were traveling with them in their cars because we didn't have one. When we got to the town of Mardan, we went on by ourselves, taking the Flying Coach as far as it would go. By the end of our journey, we were on foot. We had to walk the last fifteen miles on treacherous, washed-out roads, carrying all our things. It was nearly dark and a curfew would go into effect any minute when we reached the turnoff to Shangla. There, an army officer at a roadblock stopped us. "Curfew. No one can pass through here," he said. "We are IDPs," we told him. "We need to get to our family's village." But he still would not let us pass. Internally displaced persons. That's what we were now, not Pakistanis, not Pashtuns. Our identity had been reduced to three letters: IDP. We begged the man, and after my grandmother began to weep, he let us pass. As we walked those last few miles in the dark, shivers ran up and down our spines. We worried that an approaching army vehicle would mistake us for terrorists and shoot us in the back. Finally, when we staggered into Shangla, our relatives were shocked. The Taliban had only recently left the mountains, but there was a rumor they would be back. "Why did you come here?" they asked. For IDPs, there was no safe place. We tried to settle into a new life in the mountains, not sure how long we'd be there. I signed up for the same class as my cousin Sumbul, who is a year older than me—and then realized I would have to borrow clothes from her because I had packed a mishmash of trousers and tunics. It took us more than a half hour to walk to school, and when we arrived, I saw that there were only three girls in Sumbul's grade. Most of the village girls stop going to school after they turn ten, so the few girls who did go were taught alongside the boys. Meanwhile, I caused a bit of a shock because I didn't cover my face the way the other girls did and because I talked freely in class and asked questions. I was soon to learn a lesson in country ways. It happened on the second day of school, when Sumbul and I arrived late for class. It was my fault—I always like to sleep in—and I started to explain. I was momentarily confused when the teacher told us to hold out our hands—then stunned when he slapped my and my cousin's palms with a stick. I went to my seat, burning with humiliation. But after my embarrassment faded, I realized that this punishment meant I was simply being treated as one of the group. I was content being with my cousins, but, oh, how I missed my home. And my old school. And my books. And even Ugly Betty. The radio was our lifeline up in the mountains, and we listened to it constantly. One day in May the army announced that it had sent paratroopers into Mingora in preparation for a face-off with the Taliban there. A battle raged for four days—up and down the streets of Mingora. It was impossible to tell who was winning. And by the end, there was hand-to-hand combat in the streets. I tried to picture it: Taliban men fighting in the alley where we played cricket. Army soldiers shooting out of hotel windows. Finally, the army announced that it had the Taliban on the run. It had destroyed Imam Deri Fazlullah's stronghold. Then it captured the airport. Within four weeks, the army said it had taken back the city. We breathed a little easier but wondered: Where would the Taliban go in retreat? Would they come back up here to the mountains? All this time, we worried terribly about my father. It was nearly impossible to get a phone signal way up in the mountains, and sometimes my mother had to climb a big boulder in the middle of a field just to get one bar of service. So we almost never heard from him. He was in Peshawar, staying in a room at a hostel with three other men, trying to get the media and the regional officials to understand what was going on in Swat this whole time. Then, after about two more weeks, he called and told us to join him in Peshawar. We all wept with joy when we were finally reunited. He had big news: Richard Holbrooke, a special ambassador from the United States, would be holding a meeting in Islamabad, and we were invited. But the morning of the meeting, we overslept! I hadn't set the alarm correctly, and my father was a bit angry with me. Somehow we made it to the hotel in time, though. It was a conference of twenty social activists from war-stricken tribal areas across Pakistan, all gathered around a large table—and I was seated right next to the ambassador. Mr. Holbrooke turned to look at me. "How old are you?" he said. I straightened my posture to look as tall as possible. "I am twelve," I said. It was almost true; I would be twelve in a matter of days. I took a deep breath. "Respected ambassador," I said. "I request you help us girls to get an education." He laughed. "You already have lots of problems, and we are doing lots for you," he said. "We have pledged billions of dollars in economic aid; we are working with your government on providing electricity and gas, but your country faces a lot of problems.” I could not tell what his laughter meant. But I understood his words. The education of girls was far down on the list of issues that Pakistan faced. Maybe my posture sagged a little. Maybe my smile faded a bit. But I didn't really let on that I was disappointed. Besides, by now I knew: Just to get on TV and speak on behalf of girls' education was half the battle. The other half still lay ahead of us. And I would keep fighting. After our visit to Islamabad, where we also held a press conference to share our story so that people would know what was happening in Swat, we didn't quite know where we would go next. Mingora was still smoldering. The Taliban were retreating into the mountains of Swat. So we accepted an invitation to stay in Abbottabad. Better yet was the news that Moniba was also staying in Abbottabad. She and I hadn't spoken since our fight just before the last day of school, but she was still my best friend. So I called and invited her to meet me in a park; I took Pepsi and biscuits as a peace offering. "It was all your fault," she told me. I agreed. I didn't care who was right or wrong (although I'm pretty sure I had done nothing wrong). I was just happy to be friends again. Meanwhile, my birthday was coming. All day I waited for the celebration—but in the chaos, everyone had forgotten. I tried not to feel sorry for myself, but I couldn't help thinking about how different my last birthday had been. I had shared a cake with my friends. There had been balloons, and I had made a wish for peace in our valley. I closed my eyes and made that same wish on my twelfth birthday. Malala wished for peace on her 12th birthday. After three months of living here and there, with strangers and relatives, we were finally on our way home. As we drove down the mountain pass and saw the Swat River, my father began to weep. And when we saw the condition of poor Mingora, we were all in tears. Everywhere we looked, we saw buildings in rubble, piles of wreckage, burned-out cars, and smashed-out windows. Storefronts had had their heavy metal shutters pried off; their windows were gaping, their shelves empty. It seemed that every building was pockmarked with bullet holes. It still felt like a war zone. Army soldiers peered down at us from machine-gun nests on the rooftops, their guns trained on the streets. And even though the government had said it was safe to go back, most people were still too afraid to return. The bus station, normally bustling with the chaos of brightly colored buses and hundreds of travelers, was deserted, and weeds were growing up through cracks in the paving. But there was no sign of the Taliban. As we rounded the corner to our home, we prepared ourselves for the worst. We had heard that the houses surrounding ours had been looted; TVs and jewelry had been stolen. We held our breath as our father unlocked the gate. The first thing we saw was that the garden in front of the house had become a jungle. My brothers immediately ran off to check on their pet chickens. They came back crying; all that was left was a pile of feathers and bones. Their birds had starved to death. Meanwhile, I ran to the guest room, where I had hidden my books. They were safe and sound. I said a prayer of thanks and paged through them. How lovely to see my quadratic equations, my social studies notes, and my English grammar book again. I nearly wept for joy until I remembered: We still did not know whether our school had survived. "Someone has been here,” my father said as we entered the school gate. The building across the street had been hit by a missile, but, miraculously, the school was intact. Inside, cigarette butts and food wrappers littered the floors. The chairs and desks were turned upside down in a jumble. The Khushal School sign was in the corner where my father had placed it for safekeeping. I lifted it up and screamed. Underneath were a handful of goats' heads. It took me a minute to realize that they were the remains of someone's dinner. Anti-Taliban slogans were scribbled all over the walls. And inside the classrooms, bullet casings littered the floors. "Army Zindabad!" which means "Long Live the Army"- was scrawled on a whiteboard. We understood, then, who'd been staying there. The soldiers had punched a hole in one of the walls on the upper floor, through which you could see the street below. Perhaps they had used this spot as a sniper's post. Although it was a mess, our beloved school was still standing. After surveying the damage to the classrooms, my father and I went into his office. There he found a letter the army had left for him. It blamed the people of Swat for allowing the Taliban to take control of our homeland.. "We have lost so many of the precious lives of our soldiers—and this is due to your negligence," the letter said. "Long Live the Pakistani Army!" My father shrugged. "How typical,” he said. “First the people of Swat fall under the spell of the Taliban, then they are killed by the Taliban, and now they are blamed for the Taliban!" It was all confusing. I used to want to become a doctor, but after everything we had been through, I began to think that becoming a political leader might be a better choice. Our country had so many problems. Maybe someday I could help solve them.