Chapters 14 to 15 PDF - I Am Malala

# Secret School My father wanted me to continue to improve my English. So he encouraged me to watch a DVD that one of the journalists in Islamabad had given me: a TV program called Ugly Betty. I loved Betty, with her big braces and her big heart. I was in awe watching her and her friends as they wa...

# Secret School My father wanted me to continue to improve my English. So he encouraged me to watch a DVD that one of the journalists in Islamabad had given me: a TV program called Ugly Betty. I loved Betty, with her big braces and her big heart. I was in awe watching her and her friends as they walked freely down the streets of New York—with no veils covering their faces and no need for men to accompany them. My favorite part, though, was seeing Betty’s father cook for her instead of vice versa! But I learned another lesson watching the show. Although Betty and her friends had certain rights, women in the United States were still not completely equal; their images were used to sell things. In some ways, I decided, women are showpieces in American society, too. When I watched, I looked at their hems cut so short and their necklines so low, I wondered if there was a clothing shortage in the United States. How crazy it was that this little plastic disc with images of a girl in big glasses and shiny braces was illegal. And how odd, too, to watch as Ugly Betty and her friends were free to walk the streets of New York City, while we were trapped inside with nothing to do. Another show I was given was a British comedy from the 1970s. It's called Mind Your Language and about a classroom full of adults from all over the world trying to learn English. Madam Maryam gave it to my father, but I watched it, and it made me laugh and laugh. It’s not good for learning English, though, because everyone on the show speaks it so poorly! But it’s where I learned some of my favorite sayings, like “jolly good” and “h’okay” and “excooze me” and "thassalrye" (that’s all right). Meanwhile, my little brother Atal and his friends had started playing a new game. Instead of playing parpartuni, he and his friends were playing Army vs. Taliban. Children all over our neighborhood made pretend weapons out of whatever they could find. They fashioned guns out of sticks or folded paper, and grenades out of old water bottles. War and terrorism had become child’s play. Sometimes my own little brothers—unaware of what it really meant—would pretend to be Taliban militants or army soldiers. They’d even set up bunkers on our roof, where they acted out a battle. # I Am Malala One day I saw Atal in the backyard furiously digging a hole. “What are you doing?” I asked. I shuddered when he gave me his answer in the most normal, natural tone of voice. “Making a grave,” he said. All the while, I kept up my blog posts as Gul Makai. Four days after all girls’ schools were shut down, Fazlullah’s men destroyed five more schools. I am quite surprised, I wrote. These schools had already been closed. Why did they also need to be destroyed? Meanwhile, the army was doing nothing about it but looking busy. Soldiers sat in their bunkers, smoking cigarettes, shelling all day, and firing cannons at the hills all night long. But in the mornings, the news would come not that the army had gained ground but that the Taliban had slaughtered two or three people. The people of Swat continued going to watch the floggings announced on Radio Mullah. And girls who only wanted to learn were trapped inside homes that had become like jails. # Secret School I was eleven, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. Besides, I could easily pass as a ten-year-old. Madam Maryam sent out a message to all the girls in the upper school: If they wanted to defy this new edict, she would open the school doors. “Just don’t wear your uniforms," she said. “Dress in everyday clothes, plain shalwar kamiz that won’t attract attention.” So the next day, I put on everyday clothes and left home with my books hidden under my shawl and my head held high. But Mingora had changed while school was closed for that month. Now the streets were ghostly quiet. Stores were shuttered, houses were dark, and even the normal din of traffic was a mere murmur. More than a third of the population had fled. My friends and I were a little bit scared as we made our way to school on that first forbidden day, but we had a plan: If a Talib stopped us, we would just say, "We are in grade four.” During those dark, dull days, we heard rumblings about secret talks with the Taliban. Then, out of nowhere, Fazlullah agreed to lift the ban on elementary school for girls. It was all right for little girls to go to school, he said, but he still insisted that girls over ten should stay home, in purdah. # Peace? When I got to school that morning, I was more elated than ever to walk through the gate. Madam Maryam was waiting there for us, giving each girl a hug and telling us we were brave. She was brave, too, of course; she was taking a big risk being there. Girls like us might be reprimanded. A grown woman could be beaten. Or killed. “This secret school,” she said, “is our silent protest” One morning in February we awoke to gunfire. It wasn’t unusual for us to be awakened several times each night by the sounds of gunfire. But this was different. The people of Mingora were firing guns into the air to celebrate a peace treaty. The government had agreed to impose sharia If the Taliban would stop fighting. Sharia meant that all aspects of life—from property disputes to personal hygiene—would be dictated by religious judges. Even though people criticized the peace deal, I was happy because it meant I could go back to school. Since 2007, more than a thousand people had been killed. Women had been kept in purdah, schools and bridges had been blown up, businesses had closed, and the people of Swat had lived with constant fear. But now it was all to stop. Perhaps the Taliban would settle down, go back to their homes, and let us live as peaceful citizens. # Peace? Best of all, the Taliban had relented on the question of girls’ schools. Even older girls could return to school. We would pay a small price, though; we could go to school as long as we kept ourselves covered in public. Fine, I thought, if that’s what it takes. While school was closed, I had continued doing interviews about girls’ right to education, and my father and I attended rallies and events to spread our message as far and wide as we could. But now GEO TV, the biggest channel in our country, wanted to interview a girl about the peace treaty. We were being interviewed on the rooftop of a hotel at night. They wired me with a microphone and counted down: five-four-three-two-one. The interviewer asked me how the peace deal would affect girls, and whether I thought it should happen. The peace treaty had only just been announced and already someone had violated it—a journalist who had recently interviewed my father had been killed. I was disappointed in the treaty already, and I said so. “We are really sad the situation is getting worse. We were expecting peace and to go back to school. The future of our country can never be bright if we don't educate the young generation. The government should take action and help us.” But I wasn’t done. I added, “I’m not afraid of anyone. I will get my education. Even if I have to sit on the floor to continue it. I have to continue my education, and I will do it.” How had I become so bold? I wondered. “Well, Malala," I told myself, "you're not doing anything wrong. You are speaking for peace, for your rights, for the rights of girls. That’s not wrong. That’s your duty." After the interview, a friend of my father's asked him, "How old is Malala?” When my father told him I was eleven, he was shocked. She is pakha jenai, he said, wise beyond her years. Then he asked, "How did she get that way?" My father said, "Circumstances have made her so.” But we were badly deceived. After the imposition of sharia, the Taliban became even bolder. Now they openly patrolled the streets of Mingora with guns and sticks as if they were the army. They killed policemen and dumped their bodies by the side of the road. They beat a shopkeeper because he allowed women to shop for lipstick unaccompanied. And they threatened the women at the bazaar, including my mother. One day, when my mother went to the market to buy a gift for my cousin's wedding, a big, burly Talib accosted her and blocked her way. “I could beat you, you know, for leaving your home without the proper burqa,” he said. “Do you understand?” My mother was angry and frightened. He meant a shuttlecock burqa, which covers the whole face, with only a mesh grille to see through. She was wearing a fashion burqa and didn't even own the other kind. "Yes, okay," she said. "I will wear this in the future.” She had never told a lie before. But, then again, she had never been confronted at the market by a man with a machine gun before. “Good,” said the man. “Next time, I will not be so nice to you." Soon we learned that even a burqa was no protection against the whims of the Taliban. One day I came home to find my father and his friends watching a video on his phone. I leaned in to see what the fuss was about. In the video, a teenage girl wearing a black burqa and red trousers was lying facedown on the ground being flogged in broad daylight by a bearded man in a black turban. "Please stop it!" she begged in between screams and whimpers as each blow was delivered. "In the name of Allah, I am dying!" You could hear the Talib shouting, "Hold her down. Hold her hands down.” At one point during the flogging, her burqa slipped up to reveal her trousers. The beating stopped for a moment so the men could cover her up again, then they went back to beating her. A crowd had gathered but did nothing. One of the girl’s relatives even volunteered to help hold her down. By the time it was over, she had been struck thirty-four times. A few days later the video was everywhere—even on TV—and the Taliban took credit. “This woman came out of her house with a man who was not her husband, so we had to punish her," a spokesman said. “Some boundaries cannot be crossed." Woman? She was a teenager, maybe six years older than me. Yes, a boundary had been crossed. Grown men had taken to beating teenagers. Soon the shelling began again. As we all huddled together in the dining room, one question was on our minds: What kind of peace was this? The New York Times documentary had aired and brought even more attention to the plight of girls in Swat, and we started receiving messages of support from people all over the world. I saw then how powerful the media can be. We even heard from a nineteen-year-old Pakistani girl in the United States, a student at Stanford, Shiza Shahid. She would eventually play a big part in our campaign for education. For the first time, we knew our story was being heard beyond the borders of Pakistan. On 20 April Sufi Mohammad, the TNSM leader who had helped facilitate the peace deal between the government and the Taliban (and Fazlullah’s father-in-law), came to Mingora to make a speech. That morning, my brothers and I peered out the gate as hundreds of people filed past our house on their way to the rally. Some teenage Taliban fighters went past, playing victory songs on their mobile phones and singing along in loud, excited voices. Quickly, we closed the gate so they couldn’t see us. Eventually a huge crowd-nearly forty thousand people-gathered. And even though the field was quite a way from our house, we could hear the hum of thousands of voices chanting Taliban songs. It was a chilling sound. Our father had left the house that morning to watch the rally from the rooftop of a nearby building. When he came home that evening, he looked as if he had aged a hundred years. The speech was a disappointment. We had thought Sufi Mohammad would tell his followers to put down their weapons, but instead he called democracy un-Islamic and encouraged them to keep fighting. “It’s not enough that they’ve had their way in Swat,” my father said, “The Taliban are marching on Islamabad.” Even some of Sufi Mohammad's own followers were unhappy with this turn of events. Within days the Taliban streamed into the city of Buner, a town just south of Swat, only sixty miles from the capital. Now that the capital was at risk, the army planned a counterattack. Once again, Mingora was squarely in the middle. This time, my mother said we should leave and take shelter in Shangla.