Preface

A year has passed since my book came out, and two years since the October morning when I was shot by the Taliban on a school bus on my way home from class. My family has been through many changes. We were plucked from our mountain valley in Swat, Pakistan, and transported to a brick house in Birmingham, England's second biggest city. Sometimes it seems so strange that I want to pinch myself. I'm 17 now and one thing that has not changed is that I still don't like getting up in the morning. The most astonishing thing is that it's my father whose voice wakes me up now. He gets up first every day and prepares breakfast for me, my mother and my brothers Atal and Kushal. He doesn't let his work go unnoticed. of course, going on about how he squeezes fresh juice, fries eggs heats flat bread and takes the honey out of the cupboard. 'It's only breakfast!' I tease. For the first time in his life, he also does the shopping, although he hates doing it. The man who didn't even know the price of a pint of milk is such a frequent visitor to the supermarket that he knows where everything is on the shelves! 'I've become like a woman, a true feminist!" he says, and I jokingly throw things at him.

My brothers and I then all rush off to our different schools. And Bo does our mother, Toor Pekai, which truly is one of the biggest changes of all. She is attending a language centre five days a week to learn how to read and write, and also to speak English. My mother had no education and perhaps that was the reason that she always encouraged us to go to school. Don't wake up like me and Tealise what you missed years later, she says. She faces so many problems in her daily life, because up until now she's had ditficulty communicating when she's gone shopping, or to the doctor, or the............