Malala recalls being shot by Taliban
(Photo: Altered by The Quint/Erum Gaur)
Video Editor: Sandeep Suman
"Two weeks ago, while the US troops withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban gained control, I lay in a hospital bed in Boston, undergoing my sixth surgery, as doctors continued to repair the Taliban’s damage to my body."
Pakistani activist and youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, was shot in the head by a Taliban militant, in 2012, in Pakistan's Peshawar, when she was just 15. She looked the terrorist in the eye and took a bullet in the head, for fighting for young girls' rights and education.
Malala Yousafzai at the hospital in 2012.
On 9 October 2012, a member of the Pakistani Taliban boarded Malala's school bus and shot one bullet into her left temple. The bullet grazed her left eye, skull and brain, lacerating her facial nerve, shattering her eardrum and breaking her jaw joints – requiring her to go through various rounds of critical surgery.
Malala Yousafzai.
Days later, Malala still couldn’t speak, but she started writing things in a notebook and showing them to the nurses. She had questions – What happened to her? Where was her father? Who was going to pay for the treatment? They didn't have the money.
A part of Malala's broken skull on her bookshelf.
The doctors in London, United Kingdom, eventually decided to fit a titanium plate where Malala's skull bone had been, reducing the risk of infection, in a procedure called cranioplasty.
Malala Yousafzai.
She still needed two extensive surgeries. And they worked – Malala finally had more movement in her face.
Malala in the hospital, after her surgery in 2018.
While recalling the bullet attack on her and her road to recovery, Malala's heart went out to all the Afghans who had to face bullets by the Taliban, who are back to the draconian and darks ages under them and are desperately trying to flee the country.
Malala Yousafzai.
Malala thanks all those who extended support to her and helped her survive and recover. "The wounds from my recent surgery are fresh. On my back, I still carry the scar where doctors removed the bullet from my body," recalls Malala.
Malala after her surgery in August 2021.
Malala said that she recently called her best friend – the girl who was sitting next to her on the school bus when she was attacked. She wanted to know what exactly happened that day and asked her friend to narrate the incident to her.
"Did I scream? Did I try to run away," she asked her friend.
Two of her classmates – Shazia and Kainat – were shot in the hand and the arm. "The white school bus went red with blood," Malala recalled.
Malala Yousafzai.
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