Google – AFP, 26 October 2012
 |
"There
were tears in our eyes out of happiness," Malala's father said.
(Queen
Elizabeth Hospital/AFP)
|
LONDON —
The response of Pakistan to the shooting of the schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai by
the Taliban was a "turning point" for the country, her father said
Friday at the British hospital where she is recovering.
"When
she fell, Pakistan stood and the world rose. This is a turning point," a
clearly emotional Ziauddin Yousafzai told journalists.
He said
Malala, 15, was recovering "at an encouraging speed" in the Queen
Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, where she was brought from Pakistan on
October 15.
Malala was
shot in the head in an attack which attracted condemnation in Pakistan and
around the world after she was singled out by the Taliban for punishment
because she campaigned for girls to be educated in the Swat valley.
"She
is not just my daughter, she is everybody's daughter," her father said.
He thanked
the doctors at the hospital in the city in central England, saying: "She
got the right treatment, at the right place, at the right time.
"She
is recovering at an encouraging speed and we are very happy."
At one
point, Ziauddin had to stop and compose himself as he recalled how in the aftermath
of the shooting he asked his brother-in-law to make arrangements for a funeral
because he did not believe Malala would survive.
When asked
how he felt when he and his family saw Malala for the first time since they
arrived in Britain on Thursday, he said: "I love her and last night when
we met her there were tears in our eyes out of happiness.
"We
all cried a little bit."
Malala's
mother and two brothers have also come to Birmingham, where the girl is being
treated in the highly specialised hospital where service personnel who are
seriously injured in Afghanistan are taken.
He said her
mother was too camera-shy to attend the media briefing, but pictures released
by the hospital showed the family gathered around Malala's bed. Malala was
wearing a pale green head covering.
Malala has
received thousands of goodwill messages from around the world.
Doctors
have said a bullet grazed her brain and came within centimetres of killing her,
travelling through her head and neck before lodging in her left shoulder.
She
requires reconstructive surgery, but she must first fight off an infection in
the path of the bullet and recover her strength, which could take months.
Her skull
will need reconstructing either by reinserting bone or using a titanium plate.
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