He tried to explain that those children were breadwinners so if they went to school, even for free, the whole family would go hungry. However, he got a wealthy philanthropist, Azaday Khan, to pay for him to produce a leaflet asking, ‘Kia hasool e elum in bachun ka haq nahe? ’ – ‘Is education not the right of these children?’ My father printed thousands of these leaflets, left them at local meetings and distributed them around town.

父亲试着解释给我听，说那些孩子得负责养家糊口。如果他们来上学，那么他们全家人就都得饿肚子了。不过，他仍去找了一个有钱的慈善家——阿赞地·汗帮忙出钱印了许多传单。单子上写着：孩子们难道没有受教育的权利吗？父亲印了几千张传单，放在各种集会场所，也在市区里发放。

By then my father was becoming a well-known figure in Swat. Even though he was not a khan or a rich man, people listened to him. They knew he would have something interesting to say at workshops and seminars and wasn’t afraid to criticise the authorities, even the army, which was now running our country. He was becoming known to the army too, and friends told him that the local commander had called him ‘lethal’ in public. My father didn’t know what exactly the brigadier meant, but in our country, where the army is so powerful, it did not bode well.

这时候，父亲在斯瓦特已经很出名。虽然他不是部落首领，也不是富有之人，但大家还是会听他说话。他们知道他会在研讨会上讲些有趣的议题，并且敢于批判当权者，甚至批判军政府。军方中也开始有人知道他了，父亲的朋友跟他说，当地指挥官曾公开称他“具有杀伤力”。父亲不明白指挥官确切的意思，但在军方势力强大的我国，就不是个好兆头。

One of his pet hates was the ‘ghost schools’. Influential people in remote areas took money from the government for schools which never saw a single pupil. Instead they used the buildings for their hujras or even to keep their animals. There was even a case of a man drawing a teacher’s pension when he had never taught a day in his life. Aside from corruption and bad government, my father’s main concern in those days was the environment. Mingora was expanding quickly – around 175,000 people now called it home – and our once-fresh air was becoming very polluted from all the vehicles and cooking fires. The beautiful trees on our hills and mountains were being chopped down for timber. My father said only around half the town’s population had access to safe drinking water and most, like us, had no sanitation. So he and his friends set up something called the Global Peace Council which, despite its name, had very local concerns. The name was ironic and my father often laughed about it, but the organisation’s aim was serious: to preserve the environment of Swat and promote peace and education among local people.

父亲最讨厌的一件事，是“幽灵学校”的存在。一些有权有势的人拿到政府的办学基金，在偏远地方办学，但却从未招收任何学生。他们会把学校建筑拿来当自己的会堂，甚至拿来养牲畜。还有人这辈子从没教过一天书，却领取教师退休金。除了贪污问题和政府的腐败以外，父亲当时最担忧的就是环境问题。明戈拉发展速度惊人，人口已达17.5万，我们原本清新的空气，现在被汽车废气和煮饭的油烟弄得乌烟瘴气。山上美丽的树木都被砍下来当柴火。父亲说城里只有一半的人有办法取得干净的饮用水，大多数人，包括我们在内，都没有卫浴设备。所以父亲和他的朋友们成立了一个组织，叫作“地球和平委员会”，虽然名称很大，但关注的其实是当地的问题。组织的名字很讽刺，父亲经常取笑这个名称，但组织的目的是很严肃的：保护斯瓦特的环境，并在当地倡导和平与教育。