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More than a month has passed since the Pakistani Taliban stormed into a school and killed 150 people, most of them children. The school, in the city of Peshawar, is run by the Pakistani army. Many of the dead are the sons of soldiers. NPR's Philip Reeves went to the school to meet the teachers and to see how they're rebuilding after such a devastating event.
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Pause for a moment and imagine what it would be like if this happened at your school - 132 students, mostly teenage boys and a dozen teachers, are wiped out in a single attack. How do you even start to heal a community that's been through this?
SAMINA IRSHAD: We are now more loving, showing more love to the students.
REEVES: Samina Irshad is head of the middle school.
IRSHAD: Even those who used to, you know, make us angry in the past, we just go and hug them and love them and just say thank God we're OK.
REEVES: When you first walk into the Army Public School in Peshawar, it seems strangely normal. Right now, classes are over for the day. Boys in green blazers and gray pants mill around chatting. Then you notice the detail - the fresh concrete where the perimeter walls have been made much higher, the new razor wire coiled on top of those walls, the soldiers with machine guns guarding them. And hanging from those same walls, banners, bearing the words I shall rise and I shall shine.
IRSHAD: This is the principal's office. This was not like this. It was a very beautifully decorated office previously.
REEVES: The school principal was killed in the attack. Her office has been rebuilt. It was wrecked by the Taliban suicide bombers, says Samina Irshad.
IRSHAD: And two of them, they blasted their jackets here in this room.
REEVES: When that happened, two women teachers were hiding just a few feet away in the washroom. The teachers survived, but haven't yet felt well enough to return to school. Getting back to work amid so much pain and trauma hasn't been easy for anyone.
IRSHAD: On the very first day, when I saw all my children in the bad state, for a moment there was a thought - I thought maybe I should quit. But then afterwards, I thought I'm the person who has to rebuild. I'm the one who has to encourage the teachers, the students, the parents to come and - come to the school again.
REEVES: Samina Irshad said that meant keeping her own emotions in check.
IRSHAD: There were people who had been crying all the time, but I didn't cry afterwards. I used to cry at my home, but never here - just to encourage the parents and the students and the teachers to come again.
REEVES: When the Taliban stormed in, Samina ran from classroom to classroom telling kids to stay inside and lie on the floor. She recalls that at one point, children suddenly came flooding in from another part of the school.
IRSHAD: They were badly injured. Most of them, they were bleeding, and we pushed them and we just told them to go into different rooms.
REEVES: Samina spent two hours holed up with the injured kids. She says they showed remarkable courage.
IRSHAD: They were not screaming at all, they were not screaming. And they were just lying on the floor with, you know, all the blood around them. The others who were not injured, they just gave their mufflers and their handkerchiefs to us, and we just tied them on their wounds.
REEVES: Ayesha Shoaib teaches English at this school. She says her family's now urging her to quit her job.
AYESHA SHOAIB: But I just told them that death can be possible everywhere. You can't protect me at home also. And I want to serve over here because it's my moral responsibility. And also, these students need us.
REEVES: Ayesha is in charge of an eighth-grade class. Fourteen students in that class were killed. It's now important, she says, to let students talk about what happened and the death of their friends.
SHOAIB: These fellows are missing so they want to discuss about those boys - their fellows. Each and every day they just, like, repeat the same sentences again and again. Unconsciously they are they are doing these things.
REEVES: Ayesha says the school held an activities day recently when the boys were encouraged to express their feelings through writing and art. That helped, she says. Ayesha has noticed her students are behaving a little differently these days, some get a bit aggressive, some are quiet. They're all jumpy.
SHOAIB: When sudden noise come and sudden voice - a loud voice, so they're just distracted, and they asked that what happened, what happened ma'am, what happened? And even they just go to windows and just want to find out what happened outside.
REEVES: The school says counselors are on hand to help parents, staff and the 800 or so surviving students. There are trauma specialists from the Pakistani military. As studies resume, most kids are turning up for class again. Today's attendance is 88 percent. Ayesha Shoaib says there's a certain defiance about the children.
SHOAIB: Our students are more motivated. They wanted to show the world that we are better than before.
REEVES: Yet, no one here doubts the road to recovery will be difficult.
SHOAIB: It will take years. It will take years. Not less than that.
REEVES: Don't be fooled by appearances, says middle school head Samina Irshad. From the outside, we may look as if we're on the mend, she say, but healing the wounds within will take a very long time. Philip Reeves, NPR News.