The youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by a Taliban militant in 2012. She was shot in 2012 when she was just 15 years old.
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On October 9, 2012, a member of the Pakistani Taliban boarded Malala’s school bus. He shot one bullet into her left temple. The bullet grazed her skull and brain, her left eye, lacerating her facial nerve.
It shattered her eardrum and broke her jaws. Malala was shot by Taliban terrorists for her campaign for the education of girls.
Her left temporal skull bone was removed to create space for the brain to swell. She was airlifted to the Armed Forces Institute in Rawalpindi and then to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the UK. “When I opened my eyes, I was relieved to realize I was alive. But I didn’t know where I was or why I was surrounded by strangers speaking English,” Malala remembered.
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As a way of communication, she began writing in a notebook. She could not recognise half her face when she saw herself in the mirror, because the other half had no movement. She was told that a part of her skull bone is relocated in her stomach which makes her abdomen hard. Doctors decided to fit a titanium plate in the place of her skull bone to reduce the risk of infection. Today, the skull bone sits on Malala’s bookshelf.
She wrote, “On August 9 in Boston, I woke up at 5:00 am to go to the hospital for my latest surgery and saw the news that the Taliban had taken Kunduz, the first major city to fall in Afghanistan”. In a statement on Twitter, she also expressed her worries for women, minorities and human rights advocates in the country. She called up for the local authorities and international leaders to provide help. She tweeted, “I am deeply worried about women, minorities and human rights advocates.”
She also talked about how she might not have received the medical care if people would have sent thousands of letters and prayers in support of her. “Without the crowds of people holding ‘I am Malala’ signs…and news stories, I might not have received medical care”.
In her Instagram post dated August 24, 2021, she mentioned that nine years later, she is still recovering from just one bullet. Adding that the people of Afghanistan have taken millions of bullets over the last four decades.
