Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who was shot by the Taliban nine years ago, watched with horror as the terrorist group seized control in Afghanistan.
"I watched as province after province fell to men with guns, loaded with bullets like the one that shot me," the 24-year-old said emphasising the importance of drawing international
attention to the country's plight.
Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by Taliban terrorists in Pakistan in 2012 for her campaign for girls' education. "A member of the Pakistani Taliban boarded my school bus in October 2012 and fired one bullet into my left temple. The bullet grazed my left eye, skull, and brain, lacerating my facial nerve, damaging my eardrum, and breaking my jaw joints," she revealed in a recent Podium post.
Meanwhile, on Twitter, Malala shared a heartbreaking photo from nine years ago, when she was shot by the Taliban saying that "she is still recovering" from just one bullet. "Nine years after being shot, I am still recovering from just one Taliban bullet," she tweeted linking her Podium bulletin.
The bulletin continues to tell how she was shot, the treatments she received in the days and years that followed, and how a piece of her skull rests on her bookshelf as a continuous reminder of the many losses she has suffered. Malala also said in the bulletin that she had her most recent surgery two weeks ago "to repair the Taliban's damage to my body."The rights activist recalled the aftermath of the shooting, despite having no recollection of the day she was shot. She talked about the physical and mental scars that she and her friends who witnessed the shooting still bear.
After the surgery when I asked for a mirror, “half of my hair had been shaved off. I thought the Taliban had done this to me too, but the nurse said the doctors shaved it for surgery," she recalled.
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Malala felt something hard and rigid as she touched her abdomen. She was told that when surgeons removed a piece of her skull bone, it was relocated to her stomach and that she would have
to have another surgery to replace it. Doctors eventually chose to place a titanium plate in place of her skull bone to limit the danger of infection.
Malala's bookshelf now holds the skull bone fragment.
Malala called her best friend, who had been seated next to her on the bus when she was shot. Malala wanted to know what had happened nine years ago on the day she was shot.
"Did I scream? Did I try to run away?" Malala questioned her friend.
Her friend said, "No. As he called out your name, you remained still and silent, staring into the face of the Talib. You held my hand so tightly that I was in pain for days."
Malala, who was only 15 at the time, covered her face with her hands and tried to bend down before collapsing, according to her friend. "You tried to bend down while covering your face
with your hands. You collapsed into my lap a split second later."
Malala has no recollections of the day, but her friend still has nightmares about it.
Emergency surgeons in Peshawar removed her left temporal skull bone to allow her brain to swell. Her life was saved by their fast response.
"I was relieved to see I was alive when I opened my eyes."
"Journalists in Pakistan and a few international media outlets already knew my name when the Taliban shot me. They were well aware that I had been speaking out against the extremists' ban on girls' education. They got the news of the attack and people all over the world were outraged.
"However, things could have gone differently." My story could have finished with the headline "15-year-old shot in the head" on the local news.
"Without the crowds of people holding 'I am Malala' signs, without thousands of letters and offers of support, prayers and news stories, I might not have received medical care," she added.