We Are Displaced: List 2

That was when I realized the top I’d packed did not match my trousers. Sumbul smiled when she saw my dilemma and let me borrow one of her shalwar kamiz.

Despite worrying about when I’d hear from my father and what was happening back in Swat, I was excited that I could still go to school, especially since the reason I was there was because of the Taliban, who had forbidden girls to go. I liked that while I was forced to flee my own home because of their dictates, I could still defy them.

The trip from Shangla was not nearly as arduous—there were no army blockades, no Talibs waving us down—but we still could not get to Peshawar fast enough.

Even formerly wealthy individuals who might have owned fields of grain now stood in line for a bag of flour.

But the drive home tempered my enthusiasm and sparked my anxiety. Along the route, we passed several houses pockmarked with bullet holes and others reduced to rubble.

Signs of fresh warfare were everywhere, but it was otherwise serene.

It had been almost three months since we left in a torrent of frantic people fleeing for their lives.

But I also noticed that the masked men who carried the machine guns that wreaked such havoc were nowhere to be seen.

We were home, my books were fine, the Taliban were gone. This was all good news, I thought. So why did I feel so overwhelmingly sad?

Roads usually congested with traffic were empty.

While our home was virtually untouched, it was clear the army had used the school as a base of operations.

People needed some semblance of normalcy.

I had built a platform from all the media exposure I got while speaking out against the education ban and writing my blog, and I wanted to continue to use it for good.

All you need to know is that when you go through that kind of experience, there are often two extremes: Either you lose hope completely and you shatter and break into pieces, or you become so resilient that no one can break you anymore.

I was moved within Pakistan for treatment, from Mingora to Peshawar to Rawalpindi, and then a week later, while still in an induced coma, I was flown to Birmingham, England.

I was bruised, I had pounding headaches, and I had lost hearing in one ear and movement on the left side of my face. I was confined to a hospital bed.

The gray skies cast a subdued, almost gloomy effect on the white snow dusting the ground.

Some buildings lit up with neon signs that pulsed a rainbow of colors, while others looked as if they had been wrapped in tinfoil or shingled with mirrors.

I laughed to myself at the memory of seeing women not wearing headscarves in Islamabad and thinking that was liberal!

That meant they had to start from scratch in a world that was utterly foreign.

There was so much to get used to—starting with wearing itchy dark blue tights beneath my long wool skirt. I missed the comfort and ease of my shalwar kamiz!

These girls in Birmingham seemed so different from my friends. Their mannerisms, the way they spoke, so quickly that all the words ran together.

At least at our new home, I could speak Pashto with my family and tease my brothers. I could Skype with Moniba and watch Indian soap operas with my mother. This was the only solace.

By then, I knew the Taliban had publicly threatened me again, but in my young and hopeful mind, I knew I would go back. So even as I was growing more accustomed to it, I continued to hold on to the idea that Birmingham was temporary.

One thing that helped was the thousands of letters I received from people all over the world, specifically from young girls and women thanking me for standing up for their rights. They reached me at a time when I was on the precipice of making a decision: to continue my fight for girls’ education or not.