I Am Malala — Chapter no 22

22

Journey into the Unknown

I WAS SHOT ON a Tuesday at lunchtime. By Thursday morning my father was so convinced that I would die that he told my uncle Faiz Mohammad that the village should start preparing for my funeral. I had been put into an induced coma, my vital signs were deteriorating, my face and body were swollen and my kidneys and lungs failing. My father later told me that it was terrifying to see me connected to all the tubes in that small glass cubicle. As far as he could see, I was medically dead. He was devastated. ‘It’s too early, she’s only 15,’ he kept thinking. ‘Is her life to be so short?’ My mother was still praying – she had barely slept. Faiz Mohammad had told her she should recite the Surah of the Haj, the chapter of the Quran about pilgrimage, and she recited over and over again the same twelve verses (58–70) about the all-powerfulness of God. She told my father she felt I would live but he could not see how.

When Colonel Junaid came to check on me, my father again asked him, ‘Will she survive?’ ‘Do you believe in God?’ the doctor asked him. ‘Yes,’ said my father. Colonel Junaid seemed to be a man of great spiritual depth. His advice was to appeal to God and that He would answer our prayers.

Late on Wednesday night two military doctors who were intensive care specialists had arrived by road from Islamabad. They had been sent by General Kayani after the British doctors had reported back to him that if I was left in Peshawar I would suffer brain damage or might even die because of the quality of the care and the high risk of infection. They wanted to move me but suggested that in the meantime a top doctor be brought in. But it seemed they were too late.