Read Online I am Malala by Christina Malala u Lamb Yousafzai - Free Book Online
Authors: Christina Malala u Lamb Yousafzai
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if I was a teacher. Some of the female staff like Miss Ulfat would pick me up and put me on their lap as if I was their pet or even take me home with them for a while. When I was three or four I was placed in classes for much older children. I used to sit in wonder, listening to everything they were being taught. Sometimes I would mimic the teachers. You could say I grew up in a school.
As my father had found with Naeem, it is not easy to mix business and friendship. Eventually Hidayatullah left to start his own school and they divided the students, each taking two of the four years. They did not tell their pupils as they wanted people to think the school was expanding and had two buildings. Though Hidayatullah and my father were not speaking at that time, Hidayatullah missed me so much he used to visit me.
It was while he was visiting one afternoon in September 2001 that there was a great commotion and other people started arriving. They said there had been a big attack on a building in New York. Two planes had flown into it. I was only four and too young to understand. Even for the adults it was hard to imagine – the biggest buildings in Swat are the hospital and a hotel, which are two or three storeys. It seemed very far away. I had no idea what New York and America were. The school was my world and my world was the school. We did not realise then that 9/11 would change our world too, and would bring war into our valley.
4
The Village
I N OUR TRADITION on the seventh day of a child’s life we have a celebration called Woma (which means ‘seventh’) for family, friends and neighbours to come and admire the newborn. My parents had not held one for me because they could not afford the goat and rice needed to feed the guests, and my grandfather would not help them out because I was not a boy. When my brothers came along and Baba wanted to pay, my father refused as he hadn’t done this for me. But Baba was the only grandfather I had as my mother’s father had died before I was born and we became close. My parents say I have qualities of both grandfathers – humorous and wise like my mother’s father and vocal like my father’s father! Baba had grown soft and white-bearded in his old age and I loved going to visit him in the village.
Whenever he saw me he would greet me with a song as he was still concerned about the sad meaning of my name and wanted to lend some happiness to it: ‘ Malala Maiwand wala da. Pa tool jehan ke da khushala da ,’ he sang. ‘Malala is of Maiwand and she’s the happiest person in the whole world.’
We always went to the village for the Eid holidays. We would dress in our finest clothes and pile into the Flying Coach, a minibus with brightly painted panels and jangling chains, and drive north to Barkana, our family village in Shangla. Eid happens twice a year – Eid ul-Fitr or ‘Small Eid’ marks the end of the Ramadan fasting month, and Eid ul-Azha or ‘Big Eid’ commemorates the Prophet Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son Ismail to God. The dates of the feasts are announced by a special panel of clerics who watch for the appearance of the crescent moon. As soon as we heard the broadcast on the radio, we set off.
The night before we hardly slept because we were so excited. The journey usually took about five hours as long as the road had not been washed away by rains or landslides, and the Flying Coach left early in the morning. We struggled to Mingora bus station, our bags laden with gifts for our family – embroidered shawls and boxes of rose and pistachio sweets as well as medicine they could not get in the village. Some people took sacks of sugar and flour, and most of the baggage was tied to the top of the bus in a towering pile. Then we crammed in, fighting over the window seats even though the panes were so encrusted with dirt it was hard to see out of them. The sides of Swat buses are painted with scenes of bright pink and yellow flowers, neon-orange tigers
As my father had found with Naeem, it is not easy to mix business and friendship. Eventually Hidayatullah left to start his own school and they divided the students, each taking two of the four years. They did not tell their pupils as they wanted people to think the school was expanding and had two buildings. Though Hidayatullah and my father were not speaking at that time, Hidayatullah missed me so much he used to visit me.
It was while he was visiting one afternoon in September 2001 that there was a great commotion and other people started arriving. They said there had been a big attack on a building in New York. Two planes had flown into it. I was only four and too young to understand. Even for the adults it was hard to imagine – the biggest buildings in Swat are the hospital and a hotel, which are two or three storeys. It seemed very far away. I had no idea what New York and America were. The school was my world and my world was the school. We did not realise then that 9/11 would change our world too, and would bring war into our valley.
4
The Village
I N OUR TRADITION on the seventh day of a child’s life we have a celebration called Woma (which means ‘seventh’) for family, friends and neighbours to come and admire the newborn. My parents had not held one for me because they could not afford the goat and rice needed to feed the guests, and my grandfather would not help them out because I was not a boy. When my brothers came along and Baba wanted to pay, my father refused as he hadn’t done this for me. But Baba was the only grandfather I had as my mother’s father had died before I was born and we became close. My parents say I have qualities of both grandfathers – humorous and wise like my mother’s father and vocal like my father’s father! Baba had grown soft and white-bearded in his old age and I loved going to visit him in the village.
Whenever he saw me he would greet me with a song as he was still concerned about the sad meaning of my name and wanted to lend some happiness to it: ‘ Malala Maiwand wala da. Pa tool jehan ke da khushala da ,’ he sang. ‘Malala is of Maiwand and she’s the happiest person in the whole world.’
We always went to the village for the Eid holidays. We would dress in our finest clothes and pile into the Flying Coach, a minibus with brightly painted panels and jangling chains, and drive north to Barkana, our family village in Shangla. Eid happens twice a year – Eid ul-Fitr or ‘Small Eid’ marks the end of the Ramadan fasting month, and Eid ul-Azha or ‘Big Eid’ commemorates the Prophet Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son Ismail to God. The dates of the feasts are announced by a special panel of clerics who watch for the appearance of the crescent moon. As soon as we heard the broadcast on the radio, we set off.
The night before we hardly slept because we were so excited. The journey usually took about five hours as long as the road had not been washed away by rains or landslides, and the Flying Coach left early in the morning. We struggled to Mingora bus station, our bags laden with gifts for our family – embroidered shawls and boxes of rose and pistachio sweets as well as medicine they could not get in the village. Some people took sacks of sugar and flour, and most of the baggage was tied to the top of the bus in a towering pile. Then we crammed in, fighting over the window seats even though the panes were so encrusted with dirt it was hard to see out of them. The sides of Swat buses are painted with scenes of bright pink and yellow flowers, neon-orange tigers
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