14-Year-Old Girl Shot by Taliban Is Speaking, Shows No Signs of Brain Damage

Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani activist who was shot in the head by the Taliban for being an outspoken proponent of equal education while walking home from school, continues on her remarkable path to recovery, having finally regained the ability to speak. Her parents have recently traveled to the UK trauma facility where she is being treated and report that she is not showing any sign of brain damage. The brave girl is not entirely out of the woods yet. Yousafzai will be forced to remain in the hospital for several more months and undergo skull reconstruction.

Malala’s father Ziauddin — who runs a girls’ school in Pakistan’s Swat Valley — claims that, following her recovery, the family will return to Pakistan where she will continue with her activism:

“We will be back in Pakistan as soon as Malala recovers, because Swat is my home, and I cannot think of leaving there.”

He also tells the Daily Telegraph:

“I have seen doomsday and survived, you might say. Malala has been honored by the nation, by the world, by people of all classes of all creeds of all colors. I am grateful for that. But I am a father. I respect all those feelings, but the only priority now is the life of my daughter and her total rehabilitation. I don’t need any awards. … I need my daughter.”

Futher demonstrating her tenacity and dedication to education, Malala, who has been running the blog Diary of a Pakistani School Girl and publicly speaking against the Taliban since she was 11-years-old, has requested her parents bring one thing from home — her school books.