CHAPTER 1

Life as We Knew It

When I close my eyes and think of my childhood, I see pine forests and snowcapped mountains; I hear rushing rivers; I feel the calm earth beneath my feet. I was born in the Swat Valley, once known as the Switzerland of the East. Others have called it paradise, and that is how I think of Swat. It is the backdrop to all my happiest childhood memories—running in the streets with my friends; playing on the roof of our house in Mingora, the main city in Swat; visiting our cousins and extended family in Shangla, the mountain village where both of my parents were born; listening to my mother and all her friends chatting over afternoon tea in our home, and my father discussing politics with his friends.

I do recall my father talking about the Taliban, but as a faraway threat. Even as a young child, I was interested in politics and would listen to everything my father and his friends discussed, even if I didn’t always understand. In those days, the Taliban were in Afghanistan, not Pakistan. Nothing for us to be concerned with. Certainly nothing for me and my younger brother, Khushal, to worry about. And then came Atal, the baby. My biggest problem was how I felt about these brothers taking over the house.

That began to change in 2004. I was only six years old, so I didn’t notice anything at first, but when I think back on those years, my memories are tinged with the fear that I know must have been growing in my parents’ eyes. And then five years later, my beloved Swat was no longer safe, and we were forced from our home along with hundreds of thousands of others.

It started slowly. Our country had begun a time of advancement for women, but our region was going backward. In 2003, my father opened his first high school, and boys and girls attended classes together. By 2004, co-ed classes were not possible.

An earthquake in 2005 was not only devastating for the destruction it caused and the lives it took—more than seventy-three thousand were killed, including eighteen thousand children—but it also left vulnerable survivors. When men from an extremist group who had provided aid to so many who had been displaced by this natural disaster began to preach that the earthquake was a warning from God, people listened. Soon those men, who later became part of the Taliban, began preaching strict interpretations of Islam on the local radio, saying that all women must cover their faces entirely and that music and dancing and Western movies were sinful. That men should grow their beards long. That girls should not go to school.

This was not our Islam.

These were religious fundamentalists who claimed they wanted to return to an old way of living, which was ironic considering that they used technology—the radio—to spread this very message. They attacked our daily way of life in the name of Islam. They told people what they could wear, what they could listen to, what they could watch. And most of all, they tried to take away the rights of women.

By 2007, the dictates had become more aggressive and specific: They called for TVs, computers, and other electronics to be not only banished from homes but also burned and destroyed. I can still smell the stench of melting plastic and wires from the bonfires they organized. They aggressively discouraged girls from going to school, commending by name parents who had kept their girls out of school as well as the girls themselves, and condemning by name those who had not. Soon they declared that educating girls was un-Islamic.

How was going to school un-Islamic? It made no sense to me. How was any of this un-Islamic?

My family mostly ignored these commands, though we did start lowering the volume on our TV in case anyone walking by outside could hear us.

The call for girls to be kept home upset my father, Ziauddin, too. He ran two schools that he had built from scratch; one was for girls. At first, these extremists still felt fringe to my father—more an annoyance than a real terror. He had been focusing his activism on the environment. Our city was growing quickly; air pollution and access to clean water had become problems. He and some friends had founded an organization to protect the environment as well as promote peace and education in the Swat Valley. He was becoming known by some as a man to be listened to, and by others as a troublemaker. But my father has a deep sense of justice and cannot help but fight for good.

Then the Taliban gained more followers and more power, and soon life as we knew it became a collection of happy memories.

The words Taliban and militant entered our daily conversations; it was not simply something discussed on the news anymore. And rumors were spreading throughout Mingora that these militants were infiltrating Swat Valley.

I began to see men with long beards and black turbans walking in the streets. One of them could intimidate a whole village. Now they were patrolling our streets. No one knew who they were exactly, but everyone knew they were connected to the Taliban and enforcing their decrees.

I had my first real brush with the Taliban on our way to visit family in Shangla. My cousin had several music cassettes in his car for the ride and had just inserted one into the player when he saw two men wearing black turbans and camouflage vests waving down cars ahead.

My cousin ejected the tape, grabbed the others, and passed them to my mother. “Hide these,” he whispered.

My mother shoved them into her handbag without saying a word as our car slowed to a stop.

Both men had long beards and cruel eyes. Each had a machine gun slung over one shoulder. My mother pulled her veil across her face, and I could see that her hands were trembling, which caused my heart to beat more quickly.

One of the men leaned into the car and asked, “Do you have any cassettes or CDs?”

My cousin shook his head no, and my mother and I stayed silent. I worried the Talib could hear my heart thumping or see my mother’s hands shaking. I held my breath when he pushed his face into the back window to address us both.

“Sister,” he said sternly to me. “You should cover your face.”

I wanted to ask, Why? I am only a child. But the Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder stopped me from speaking.

They waved us on, but all the excitement we had felt earlier that day disappeared. We spent the next hour in total silence. The cassettes stayed in my mother’s purse.

The fear that had been growing around us now felt too close to ignore. And then the violence began.