A Hundred Questions: Reflections of Pain - Chapter 26-25 by Malala Yousafzai PDF

# A Hundred Questions I wrote a new note in my pink diary. *Mirror.* When I got my wish and the nurses brought me a small white mirror, I was surprised at what I saw. Half of my head was shaved and my long hair was gone. Stitches dotted my left brow. A huge purple and yellow bruise surrounded...

# A Hundred Questions I wrote a new note in my pink diary. *Mirror.* When I got my wish and the nurses brought me a small white mirror, I was surprised at what I saw. Half of my head was shaved and my long hair was gone. Stitches dotted my left brow. A huge purple and yellow bruise surrounded my left eye. My face was swollen to the size of a melon. And the left corner of my mouth turned down in a frown. Who was this poor, distorted Malala? And what had happened to her? I was confused, but I wasn't upset. Just curious. And I didn't know how to express what I was feeling. *Now my hair is small* was all I could write. *Had the Taliban shaved my head?* I wondered. *Hwo did this to me?* I wrote, my letters scrambled. What happened to me? # I Am Malala Dr. Fiona said what she always said: "Something bad happened to you, but you are safe." But this time it wasn't enough. I pointed at my words. *Was I shot?* I wrote. I couldn't move the pencil fast enough to keep up with my questions. Had anyone else been hurt? I wondered. Had there been a bomb? I was getting frustrated with my sore head and my bad memory and the tube that prevented me from talking. I started to squirm. I would get out of here and find a computer so I could check my e-mail and ask someone what happened. I saw the cell phone on Dr. Fiona's belt and signaled to her that I wanted it—I mimicked dialing on my palm, then brought the "phone" to my ear. Dr. Fiona placed a gentle hand on my writst and sighed. Then she spoke very slowly and calmly: "You were shot", she said. "On the bus, on your way home from school." So they did it, I thought. The Taliban really did what they said they would do. I was furious. Not that they'd shot me. That I hadn't had a chance to talk to them. Now they'd never hear what I had to say. "Two other girls were hurt," Dr. Fiona said. "But they're all right. *Shaiza* and *Kainat*. The two other girls shot with--." "I didn't recognize these names. Or if I did, I couldn't remember who these girls were. She explained that the bullet had grazed my temple, near my left eye, and travelled eighteen inches down to my left shoulder, where it stopped. It could have taken out my eye or gone into my brain, she said. "It's a miracle you're alive." # A Hundred Questions I tried to speak but remembered I couldn't. I took the mirror and pointed to a splatter of black dots near my temple. Dr. Fiona grimaced slightly. "Gunpowder." I lifted my hand and showed her more black dots on the fingers of my left hand. "That's gunpowder, too," she said. "You must have lifted your hand to cover your face at the last minute." I will admit that I used to be sensitive about my looks. I was never satisfied. My nose was too big. I had funny black spots on my face. My skin was too dark. Even my toes were too long. But I looked at this Malala in the mirror with nothing but curiosity. I was like a scientists studying a specimen. I wanted to understand exactly what had happened, where the bullet went, what exactly it had done. I was fascinated by what I saw. I wasn't sad. I wasn't scared. I just thought: *It doesn't matter what I look like. I am alive.* I was thankful. I glanced over at Dr. Fiona. She had positioned a box of tissues between us, and I realized then that she'd been expecting me to cry. Maybe the old Malala would have cried. But when you've nearly lost your life, a funny face in the mirror is simply proof that you are still here on this earth. I just wanted to learn more about what the bullet had done. Had it passed through my brain? Was that why I couldn't hear properly? Why couldn't I shut my left eye? And what does any of this have to do with what's going on with my left arm? I had a hundred questions for Dr. Fiona, but I only asked one. *How soon can I go home?* # Passing The Hours The worst thing about being in the hospital was the *boredom*. While I waited for my family, I stared at the clock in my room. The movement of the hands around the dial reassured me that I was, indeed, **alive** and **helped** me measure off the minutes until my family arrived. The clock had always been my enemy at home—stealing my sleep in the morning when all I wanted to do was hide under the blanket. I couldn't wait to tell my family that I had finally made friends with the clock and for the first time in my life I was waking up early! Every morning, I waited eagerly for 7:00 AM, when friends like Yma, who worked at the hospital, and nurses from the children's hospital would come and help me pass the hours. When I could see well enough, they brought me a DVD player and a stack of DVDs. *The nurses* During my first days, they had turned on the TV for me—I watched the *BBC* for a few minutes and they were talking about the American elections between President Barack Obama and that other man, and then they changed the channel to *MasterChef*, which I had watched back in Pakistan—but my vision was still so blurry then that I asked them to turn it off and didn't ask to watch TV again. But now my eyesight was better, although I was still seeing double a bit. I got to choose from *Bend It Like Beckham*, *High School Musical*, *Hannah Montana*, and *Shrek*. I chose *Shrek*. I loved it so much I watched the sequel right after. One of the nurses figured out that if she covered my damaged eye with a cotton patch, my double vision wasn't as bad. Meanwhile, my left ear kept bleeding and my head kept throbbing. But I passed the day with a green ogre and a talking donkey while I waited for my parents to come to England. On the fifth day, the tube in my throat was removed, and I got my voice back. It was around this time that I put my hand on my tummy and felt something odd. There was a hard lump just under the skin. "What is this?" I asked one of the nurses. "*It's the top of your skull*" she said. I was sure I'd misunderstood. Between my bad hearing and my trouble with words, I thought she'd said the top of my skull was in my tummy! Dr. Fiona arrived to explain. When the bullet hit my temple, it fractured the bone, sending splinters of bone into the lining of my brain. The shock caused my brain to swell. So the doctors in Pakistan removed a piece of my skull to allow the brain to expand. To keep the bone safe, they placed it under the skin of my abdomen. I had lots of questions for Dr. Fiona; it was like being back in biology class at school. I wanted to know exactly how they removed my skull. "With a saw," Dr. Fiona replied. *What happened after that?* I asked. Dr. Fiona explained that the surgery had been a success but that I had developed an infection and that my condition had started to worsen. My kidneys and lungs began to fail, and soon I was near death. So the doctors put me in a coma; that way I could fly to England for better care. "You flew in a private jet," she said. "A private jet? How do you know?" I asked. "Because I was on the flight with you," she said. I later learned that the United Arab Emirates had offered the plane, which was fully equipped with an onboard medical unit. Dr. Fiona explained that she and Dr. Javid had been in Pakistan advising army doctors on how to set up a liver-transplant system. Dr. Javid was contacted for his advice, and he brought Dr. Fiona with him since she was a specialist in children's emergency care. She admitted she had been a little nervous about flying into Peshawar, because it had become dangerous for foreigners. But when she found out I was a campaigner for girls' rights, she came. She and Dr. Javid told the doctors in Pakistan that I wouldn't survive unless I was moved to a better-equipped hospital, so my parents agreed to let me go with them. Dr. Fiona and Dr. Javid had been by my side for nearly two weeks. No wonder they behaved as if they'd known me forever. Dr. Fiona had to go take care of her other patients, children who were sicker than I was, but I had one last question. "I was in a coma", I said. "For how long?" "A week". I had missed a week of my life. And in that time, I'd been shot, I had an operation, had nearly died, and had been flown to the other side of the world. The first time I had ever flown out of Pakistan was on a private jet to save my life. The world had gone on all around me, and I knew nothing about it. I wondered what else I had missed out on. # We Are All Here Now When the tube in my throat was removed, I had had another call with my father—one where I could actually speak. He had said he would be by my side in two days. But two days turned into two more. Dr. Javid arranged a third call to Pakistan. My father promised that the whole family would be there soon—just one more day. "Please bring my schoolbag," I begged. "Exams are coming up." I thought I'd be home in no time and would get back competing for first in class. The next day, my tenth day in the hospital, I was moved from the ICU to another room. This one had a window. I had expected Birmingham to look like cities I'd seen on television. Like New York City, with tall buildings and cars and traffic, and men dressed in business suits on the street, and women walking on the streets as well. But when I looked out, all I saw was a sky the color of an old teakettle, rainy and gray. Down below were houses, neat and uniform, calm and organized. I couldn't imagine a country where every house was the same. A country where there seemed to be no sun. Where were the mountains? The waterfalls? Later that day, Dr. Javid told me my parents were coming. I didn't believe it until he tilted my bed up so I would be sitting to greet them when they arrived. It had been sixteen days since I'd run out of my house in Mingora, shouting good-bye on my way to school. In that time, I had been in four hospitals—first in Mingora, then in Peshawar, then in _Rawalpindi_, and finally here in Birmingham—and traveled thousands of miles. I had met wonderful doctors and nurses and other hospital workers. I had not cried once. Not when the nurses removed the staples in my head, not when their needles pricked my skin, not when the light was like a dagger in my eyes. But when the door opened and I heard familiar voices saying *jani* and *pisho*, and when everyone fell upon me, weeping and kissing my hands because they were afraid to touch me, finally, I cried. I cried and cried and cried some more. Oh, how I cried. And for the first time in my life, I was even happy to see those annoying little brothers of mine. Finally, after sixteen of the most frightening days of our lives, we were all together again. After we all stopped crying, we took a minute to have a good look at one another. I was shocked at how old and tired my poor parents looked. They were exhausted from the long flight from Pakistan, but that wasn't all. Suddenly I saw that they had some gray hairs and wrinkles. Had they always had them? Or had this ordeal aged them somehow? I could tell they were shocked by how I looked, too. They tried to hide it, but I could see the concern in their eyes. They touched me cautiously, as if I might break. And who could blame them? I knew from looking in the mirror that half my face was not working. The swelling had gone down, but my left eye bulged, half my hair was gone, and my mouth drooped to one side. Meanwhile, I had been so pleased to have my voice back that I hadn't realized that I was still able to speak only in simple, baby sentences, as if I were three years old. It wasn't until I saw the surprised expression on Atal's face that I realized how strange I must have sounded. I tried to smile to reassure them. *Don't worry,* I wanted to say. *The old Malala is still in here.* But when I smiled, a shadow darkened my mother's face. I thought I was grinning—but my parents saw something that looked like an awkward, crooked frown. "Aba, who were those people?" I asked. He understood what I was asking —I wanted to know from him who had done this to me. "Jani, don't ask these questions. Everything is fine. We are all here now." Then he asked me how I was feeling, if the headaches had gone away. I knew he was trying to change the subject, and although I wanted him to answer my question, I let him. My father, my proud Pashtun father, was not himself. It was almost as if he had been shot as well; he seemed to be in physical pain. When we were alone one day, he grasped my hand. "Jani", he said, "I would take every scar you have, every minute of suffering, if I could." His eyes filled with tears. "They threatened me many times. You have taken my bullet. It should have been me." And then he said, "People experience both joy and suffering in their lives. Now you have had all the suffering at once, and the rest of your life will be filled with only joy." He could not go on. But he didn't need to say another word. I knew he was suffering, too. He had never doubted the rightness of our cause—but that cause had taken his daughter to the brink of death. How unjust the world can be sometimes. Here I was, a girl who had spoken to cameras from around the world—but my poor injured brain couldn't come up with the words for the one person I loved more than anyone else. "I'm not suffering, aba," I longed to tell him. "You need not suffer, either." I smiled my crooked smile and said simply, "Aba." My father smiled back through teary eyes. I knew that he knew exactly what I was thinking. We didn't need words. We had shared every step of the journey that somehow brought us to this hospital room. And we would share every step going forward. A little while later my mother joined us. I had just started taking small steps, but I still needed someone to help me in the bathroom. Since that first day, my mother had tried not to stare at my face. But as she guided me into the bathroom, I noticed she stole a look at my reflection in the mirror. Our eyes met for a moment, then she looked away. Then came a whisper. *Your face,* she said. *Will it get better?* I told her what the doctors had told me: I would have to undergo several surgeries and months of physical therapy, but my face would eventually improve. But it would never be quite the same as before. When she walked me back to my bed, I looked at my parents. "It's my face," I said. "And I accept it. Now," I said gently, "you must accept it, too." There was so much more I wanted to say to them. I had had time to get used to my new face. But it was a shock to them. I wanted them to know I didn't care how I looked. Me, who had spent hours fussing with my hair and fretting about my height! When you see death, I wanted to say, things change. It didn't matter if I couldn't blink or smile. I was still me, Malala. "My face. It doesn't matter," I said. "God has given me a new life." My recovery was a blessing, a gift from God and from all the people who had cared for me and prayed for me. And I was at peace. But while I was in _Birmingham_ watching _Shrek_ and his talking donkey, my poor parents had been thousands of miles away, enduring their own terrible pain. I had been healing while they had been suffering. But from that day on, our family began to heal together.