DHAKA: Seven days after the Pakistani Taleban shot her in the head, Malala Yousafzai woke up confused in a place that wasn’t home.

Her first thought? ‘Thank God I’m not dead.’

Malala, whose campaign for girls’ right to education made her a Taliban target, describes the shooting and its aftermath in a book that comes out on Tuesday, a day before the anniversary of the assassination attempt.

In an excerpt in The Sunday Times, the now 16-year-old describes riding in a school van with her girlfriends when it was stopped by two men, including the gunman who shot Malala in the left eye socket at close range.

‘I woke up on October 16, a week after the shooting,’ she writes, reports The Straits Times.

‘The first thing I thought was, `Thank God I’m not dead.` But I had no idea where I was. I knew I was not in my homeland. The nurses and doctors were speaking English though they all seemed to be from different countries.’

BDST: 2013 HRS, OCT 08, 2013
RoR/RK