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Malala Yousafzai returned to Pakistan in March 2018, more than five years after she was shot in October 2012. In an excerpt from her memoir Finding My Way, she recalls pressing her father to arrange the trip—and arriving with a mixture of joy, fear and uncertainty.
Why Malala wanted to return
In the excerpt published by Scroll on November 6, 2025, Malala writes that she asked her father to take her to Pakistan while she was home in Birmingham for spring break. After years of waiting, she felt impatient to go. She says her father had repeatedly contacted the Pakistani government, which considered whether authorities could protect her and whether her presence might disrupt the country or stir controversy. That is how the memoir describes the discussions around the trip, not a general account of a formal permission rule. Read the Scroll excerpt.
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Her account makes clear that returning was not simply a journey home. The 2012 attack had forced her to leave Pakistan for treatment and safety; this time, she was determined to go back.
The flight and arrival in Islamabad
Malala describes a nightmare during the flight in which she was shot again. After landing, she remained fearful and alert, studying the people around her and wondering whether they welcomed her or wished she had stayed away. These are her recollections of the trip, rather than a medical diagnosis.
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Contemporaneous reporting places her arrival in Islamabad on March 29, 2018, her first return since the October 2012 shooting. At a reception with then-prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she said, “I am very happy today, that after five and a half years I have set foot on my soil, in my nation again.” Al Jazeera reported on her arrival and remarks.
Returning to Mingora
On March 31, Malala travelled by helicopter from Islamabad to Mingora, in the Swat Valley. Al Jazeera reported that she met friends and former teachers amid tight security. In an account reproduced by Geo News, she recalled that her family visited their old home and that more than 500 friends and relatives came to greet them. Geo News reproduced her account of the visit.
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A return she chose
Malala’s 2018 account captures the difference between being driven from home and deciding to go back: “I didn’t leave my country by choice, but I did return by choice.” The memoir excerpt adds the private experience behind that public statement: the anticipation of seeing Pakistan again, alongside the anxiety that followed her through the journey.
Finding My Way is the memoir from which the excerpt is drawn; readers who want Malala’s fuller account of her life and return can turn to the book.
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