topics: |  south-asia | pakistan | education | adventure

After a failed attempt on K2 (considered among the toughest climbs),
Mortenson loses his way and finds himself in the unknown Balti village called
Korphe.  Appalled by the absence of a school there, he promises to build them
a school.  He checks out the costs with the locals, and finds it will need
$12K.  So he comes back to Berkeley, writes 580 letters to celebrities and
news anchors, gets nothing.  Tom Brokaw sends in $100.  Children at his
mother's school collect pennies, raising $640.  But then, an article in a
mountaineering society journal by a friend gets him the full amount from
semiconductor pioneer (one of the founders of Fairchild), Jean Hoerni,
who is also a mountain climber with Karakoram experience.  With this $1.2K
Mortenson sells off all his life's possessions, says good bye to his girl
friend, and leaves for Korphe.

In Rawalpindi, he gets an unlikely ally in the hotel porter Abdul, who is
taken in by Greg's plans of building a school for the village.  He helps Greg
get the materials at reasonable prices, starting with the scarce resource of
cement, and then the wood, which is the most major expense.

After purchasing the items indicated on the architect's list, he rents a
truck and takes them to Skardu, only to find that much of it he could also
have gotten in Skardu.  And eventually, when he reaches Korphe, he is told
that the village's first priority is a proper bridge (they now go over a
hand-drawn cable car - a rickety box hanging from a wire).  Anyhow, unless
the bridge is there, the supplies can't reach.

So he heads back to San Francisco to get the money for the bridge...  After
many pages spent labouring over Greg's depressing winterime work, he is told
to call Jean Hoerni, who gives him a check for $10K towards the bridge.
While building the bridge, he meets the millionaire mountaineer George
McKown.  Later George gives him $20K for himself to
live on, and also finds the love of his life, grad student Tara.

The story rambles a bit in the middle.  At one point, looking to build more
schools, he goes to Wazirstan, passing "squat gun factories, where Wazir
craftsmen made skillful copies of many of the world's automatic weapons".  He
meets a chief in Bannu before he is kidnapped by men with AK-47s.
Eventually, Haji Ali at Korphe wisens him - let the villagers hold the
meetings, figure out who is ready to give land and labour for a school...

In another story, Mortenson, who is a trained nurse, is called after a
difficult childbirth.  He has to reach inside the mother's uterus and pull
out the left-behind placenta, and is worried about cultural norms, but there
is no problem. 179

Meanwhile, Hoerni is delighted with the work Mortenson has done, and puts
him in charge of the Central Asia Institute, a charity which
he forms with Mortenson as director.  A year later, Hoerni is dead (with
Mortenson attending as nurse), and endows CAI with $1 million.

Eventually Mortenson builds his next three schools in three months, and goes
on to build a host of other schools.  He also builds a women's center at
Korphe (where the women can interact free of their husbands), pays salaries
for a dedicated teacher who has not seen his govt salary for several years,
builds extensions to existing government schools.  With Tara's brother, he
set up the Karakoram porter training and environmental institute.

The caring, giving, gentle face of Islam

He also befriends the Shia leader Syed Abbas Risvi and becomes well
respected in the community.  However, the sher of Chakpo, who had issued a
fatwa against him, refuses to withdraw it.  Syed Abbas and his council of
mullahs conducts inquiries at all the schools and realize that Greg respects
islam, doesn't womanize or drink - and finally issues a certificate blessing
his enterprise officially, in a certificate in

    elegant Farsi calligraphy: "our Holy Koran tells us all children should
    receive education, including our daughters and sisters. Your noble work
    follows the highest principles of Islam, to tend to the poor and sick. In
    the Holy Koran there is no law to prohibit an infidel from providing
    assistance to our Muslim brothers and sisters.... You have our permission,
    blessings, and prayers." `199

After this, Mortenson is deluged with requests. On the advice of Syed
Abbas, he also starts looking at missions addressing the health issues of
children (in some villages, one in three children died in their first year).
His group recruits local villagers and provides clean drinking water.

Syed Abbas appears many times in the story, and is lauded by Mortenson as the
face of truly caring, giving, Islam (getting water for Kargil refugess,
p. 219; speech after 9/11, p. 257).

The story is told competently by David Oliver Relin.

Excerpts

Three cups of Tea

"Doctor Greg, you must make time to share three cups of tea. We may be
uneducated. But we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long
time."

"That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in
my life," Mortenson says. "We Americans think you have to accomplish
everything quickly. We’re the country of thirty-minute power lunches and
two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought their ‘shock and awe’
campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started. Haji Ali taught me
to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as
important as building projects.

[the school faces opposition from Haji Mehdi, nurmadhar or chief of the nearby important
village of Askole].
"I have heard that an infidel has come to poison Muslim children, boys as
well as girls, with his teachings," Haji Mehdi barked. "Allah forbids the
education of girls. And I forbid the construction of this school."

--
Balti had as many names for rock as the Inuit have for snow. Brak-lep? was
flat rock, to be used for sleeping or cooking upon. Khrok_ was wedge-shaped,
ideal for sealing holes in stone homes. And small round rocks were khodos,
which one heated in a fire, then wrapped in dough to make skull-shaped kurba,
unleavened bread, which they baked every morning before setting out.

This foaming, turbulent waterspout was the birthplace of the Braldu
River. ... a Swedish kayaker arrived with a documentary film crew and put in
at this same spot, attempting to run the Braldu to the Indus River, all
eighteen hundred miles to the Arabian Sea. He was dead, smashed against
boulders by the primordial strength of the Braldu, minutes after he hit the
water.

TAXILA: In 326 b.c., Alexander the Great had billeted his army here on the
last, easternmost push of his troops to the edge of his empire.  Today's
Taxila contained the architectural flotsam of the ancient world. It had once
been the site of Buddhism's third-largest monastery and a base for spreading
the Buddha's teachings north into the mountains. But today, Taxila's historic
mosques were repaired and repainted, while the Buddhist shrines were
moldering back into the rock slabs from which they’d been built. The dusty
sprawl, hard by the brown foothills of the Himalaya, was a factory town
now. Here the Pakistani army produced replicas of aging Soviet tanks. And
four smoke plumes marked the four massive cement factories that provided the
foundation for much of Pakistan's infrastructure. 60

[BARGAINING: Abdul to wood-shop owner Ali, in Rajah Bazaar at Pindi]
Finally, Ali adjusted the crisp white prayer cap on his head and stroked his
long beard before naming a figure. Abdul shot up out of his cross-legged
crouch and clasped his forehead as if he’d been shot.
He began shouting in a wailing, chanting voice ripe with insult. Mortenson,
with his remarkable language skills, already understood much everyday
Urdu. But the curses and lamentations Abdul performed contained elaborate
insults Mortenson had never heard. Finally, as Abdul wound down and bent over
Ali with his hands cocked like weapons, Mortenson distinctly heard Abdul ask
Ali if he was a Muslim or an infidel. This gentleman honoring him by offering
to buy his lumber was a hamdard, a saint come to perform an act of zakat, or
charity. A true Muslim would leap at the chance to help poor children instead
of trying to steal their money.

Throughout Abdul's performance Ali's face remained serenely disengaged. He
sipped at his Thums Up cozily, settling in for however long Abdul's diatribe
lasted.

[KARAKORAM HIGHWAY KKH]
Hewing principally to the rugged Indus River Gorge, the KKH has cost the life
of one road worker for each of its four hundred kilometers. The "highway" was
so impassable that Pakistani engineers were forced to take apart bulldozers,
pack their components in on mules, and reassemble them before heavy work
could begin.  [attempted to fly in] bulldozers on a Russian MI-17
heavy-lifting helicopter, but the inaugural flight ... clipped a cliff and
crashed into the Indus, killing all nine aboard.

white shahid, or "martyr" monuments honored the death of Frontier Works
Organization roadbuilders who had perished in their battles with these rock
walls. 81

[TRUCK ORNAMENTATION]
Most of the brilliantly colored designs, in lime, gold, and lurid scarlet,
were curlicues and arabesques consistent with Islam's prohibition against
representative art. But a life-sized portrait of cricket hero Imran Khan on
the tailgate, holding a bat aloft like a scepter, was a form of idol worship
that provoked such acute national pride that few Pakistanis, even the most
devout, could take offense. 71

Like the exterior, the inside of the Bedford was wildly decorated, with
twinkling red lights, Kashmiri woodcarving, 3D photos of beloved Bollywood
stars, dozens of shiny silver bells, and a bouquet of plastic flowers 77

[often quotes from Helena Norberg-Hodge, author of Ancient Futsures, a work
based on living in Ladakh for 17 years, and a deep appreciation for the
self-contained ecologically sound culture of himalayan communities.] 
Quote:
    I used to assume that the direction of ‘progress’ was somehow
    inevitable, not to be questioned... In Ladakh I have learned that there
    is more than one path into the future and I have had the privilege to
    witness another, saner, way of life..." 111 HNH believes that
    preserving a traditional way of life in Ladakh — extended families
    living in harmony with the land — would bring about more happiness than
    "improving" Ladakhis’ standard of living with unchecked development.

[HNH] admiringly quotes the king of another Himalayan country, Bhutan, who
   says the true measure of a nation's success is not gross national product,
   but "gross national happiness." 120

It may seem absurd to believe that a "primitive" culture in the Himalaya has
anything to teach our industrialized society. But our search for a future
that works keeps spiraling back to an ancient connection between ourselves
and the earth, an interconnectedness that ancient cultures have never
abandoned.  136

[US image]
"Okay Bill Clinton!" Gul Mohammed said in English, raising his thumb up
enthusiastically. Clinton may have failed, ultimately, to forge peace between
Israel and Palestine, but he had, however belatedly, sent American forces to
Bosnia in 1994 to halt the slaughter of Muslims by the Christian Serbians, a
fact mujahadeen like Gul would never forget. 216

Wahhabi madrassas spreading in Pakistan

[The Saudi Wahhabi sect had been building mosques along the Afghan
border - but from the spring of 2001, he noticed their [new construction
right here in the heart of Shiite Baltistan.... Wahhabism is a conservative,
fundamentalist offshoot of Sunni Islam and the
official state religion of Saudi Arabia's rulers. Many Saudi followers of the
sect consider the term offensive and prefer to call themselves
al-Muwahhiddun, "the monotheists."

"Wahhabi" is derived from the term Al-Wahhab, which means, literally,
"generous giver" in Arabic, one of Allah's many pseudonyms. This generous
giving [is smuggled] into Pakistan, both in suitcases and through the
untraceable hawala money-transfer system... The bulk of that oil wealth
pouring in from the Gulf is aimed at Pakistan's most virulent incubator of
religious extremism — Wahhabi madrassas.

In December 2000, the Saudi publication Ain-Al-Yaqeen reported that one of
the four major Wahhabi proselytizing organizations, the Al Haramain
Foundation, had built "1,100 mosques, schools, and Islamic centers," in
Pakistan and other Muslim countries, and employed three thousand paid
proselytizers in the previous year.

The most active of the four groups, Ain-Al-Yaqeen reported, the
International Islamic Relief Organization, which the 9/11 Commission would
later accuse of directly supporting the Taliban and Al Qaeda, completed the
construction of 3,800 mosques, spent $45 million on "Islamic
Education," and employed six thousand teachers, many of them in Pakistan,
throughout the same period.

"In 2001, [... CAI] resources were peanuts compared to the Wahhabi. Every
time I visited to check on one of our projects, it seemed ten Wahhabi
madrassas had popped up nearby overnight."

The madrassa system targeted the impoverished students the public system
failed. By offering free room and board and building schools in areas where
none existed, madrassas provided millions of Pakistan's parents with their
only opportunity to educate their children. "I don’t want to give the
impression that all Wahhabi are bad," Mortenson says. "Many of their schools
and mosques are doing good work to help Pakistan's poor. But some of them
seem to exist only to teach militant jihad."

By 2001, a World Bank study estimated that at least twenty thousand madrassas
were teaching as many as 2 million of Pakistan's students an Islamic-based
curriculum. Lahore-based journalist Ahmed Rashid, perhaps the world's leading
authority on the link between madrassa education and the rise of extremist
Islam, estimates that more than eighty thousand of these young madrassa
students became Taliban recruits.

Rashid recounts his experience among the Wahhabi madrassas of Peshawar in his
bestselling book Taliban. The students spent their days studying "the Koran,
the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed and the basics of Islamic law as
interpreted by their barely literate teachers," he writes. "Neither teachers
nor students had any formal grounding in maths, science, history or
geography."

The most famous of these madrassas, the three-thousand-student Darul Uloom
Haqqania, in Attock City, near Peshawar, came to be nicknamed the "University
of Jihad" because its graduates included the Taliban's supreme ruler, the
secretive one-eyed cleric Mullah Omar, and much of his top leadership.

"Thinking about the Wahhabi strategy made my head spin," Mortenson
says. "This wasn’t just a few Arab sheikhs getting off Gulf Air flights
with bags of cash. They were bringing the brightest madrassa students back
to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for a decade of indoctrination, then encouraging
them to take four wives when they came home and breed like rabbits.

By early September 2001, the stark red minaret of a recently completed
Wahhabi mosque and madrassa compound had risen behind high stone walls in the
center of Skardu itself, like an exclamation point to the growing anxiety
Mortenson had felt all summer.  243-4

Musharraf regime

"Musharraf gained respect right away by cracking down on corruption," he
explains. "For the first time since I’d been in Pakistan, I began to meet
military auditors in remote mountain villages who were there to ascertain if
schools and clinics that the government had paid for actually existed. And
for the first time ever, villagers in the Braldu told me a few funds had
trickled to them all the way from Islamabad. That spoke more to me than the
neglect and the empty rhetoric of the Sharif and Bhutto governments.

For the first time in his life, Mortenson found himself opening envelope
after envelope of hate mail.  A letter with a Denver postmark but no return
address said, "I wish some of our bombs had hit you because you’re
counterproductive to our military efforts."  Another unsigned letter with a
Minnesota postmark attacked Mortenson in a spidery hand. "Our Lord will see
that you pay dearly for being a traitor," it began, before warning Mortenson
that "soon you will suffer more excruciating pain than our brave soldiers." 275

Corrupt Mullahs

Agha Mubarek, one of northern Pakistan's most powerful village mullahs,
attacked a near-complete coed school at Hemasil and reduced the school's
walls to a pile of rubble; and issued a fatwa, banning Mortenson from working
in Pakistan.

"Mubarek wants a spoonful of custard," Parvi said, sighing. "This mullah
approached Hemasil's village council and asked for a bribe to allow the
school to be built. When they refused, he had it destroyed and issued his
fatwa." 285

[Eventually, Mehdi Ali, the village chief at Hemasil, appeals to the Sharia
court, who listen to character witnesses.  Mehdi tells them:]
   Agha Mubarek collects money from my people and never provides any zakat
   for our children... Agha Mubarek has no business making a fatwa on a
   saintly man like Dr. Greg. It is he who should be judged in the eyes of
   Allah Almighty."

"It was a very humbling victory," Mortenson says. "Here you have this Islamic
court in conservative Shia Pakistan offering protection for an American, at a
time when America is holding Muslims without charges in Guantanamo, Cuba, for
years, under our so-called system of justice."

Afghanistan

[Commandhan Sadhar Khan: a Badakshan chief: ]
"Look here, look at these hills." Khan indicated the boulderfields that
marched up from the dirt streets of Baharak like irregularly spaced
headstones, arrayed like a vast army of the dead as they climbed toward the
deepening sunset. "There has been far too much dying in these hills," Sadhar
Khan said, somberly. "Every rock, every boulder that you see before you is
one of my mujahadeen, shahids, martyrs, who sacrificed their lives fighting
the Russians and the Taliban. Now we must make their sacrifice worthwhile,"
Khan said, turning to face Mortenson. "We must turn these stones into
schools." 350 (last page)

[Book ends on the note of Mortenson starting his new crusade in N Afghanistan]