Three Cups Of Tea Part 12

"This mullah is not about Islam!" Parvi bellowed. "He is a crook concerned with money! He has no business p.r.o.nouncing a fatwa! fatwa!"

Mortenson knew from the venom in Parvi's voice how serious a problem the fatwa fatwa presented. But home in his pajamas, half a world away, half awake, with his bare feet propped comfortably over a heating vent, it was difficult to summon the alarm the development apparently deserved. presented. But home in his pajamas, half a world away, half awake, with his bare feet propped comfortably over a heating vent, it was difficult to summon the alarm the development apparently deserved.

"Can you go talk to him, see if you can work it out?" Mortenson asked.

"You need to come here. He won't agree to meet me unless I bring a valise stuffed with rupees. Do you want me to do that?"

"We don't pay bribes and we're not going to start," Mortenson said, stifling a yawn so as not to offend Parvi. "We need to talk to a mullah more powerful than him. Do you know someone?"

"Maybe," Parvi said. "Same program tomorrow? Call the same time?"

"Yes, the same time," Mortenson said. "Khuda hafiz." "Khuda hafiz."

"Allah be with you also, sir," Parvi signed off.

Mortenson had fallen into the daily routine he would adhere to for the next decade, dictated by the thirteen-hour time difference between Bozeman and Baltistan. He went to bed by 9:00 p.m., after making "morning" calls to Pakistan. He woke up at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., in time to contact Pakistanis before the close of business. Consumed with leading the Central Asia Inst.i.tute, he rarely slept more than five hours a night.

Mortenson padded up to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, then returned to the bas.e.m.e.nt to compose the first e-mail of the day: "To: All CAI Board Members," Mortenson typed. "Subject: fatwa fatwa declared on Greg Mortenson, text: Greetings from Bozeman! Just got off the phone with new CAI Pakistan Project Manager Ghulam Parvi. (He says thank you, his phone is working well!) Parvi said that a local declared on Greg Mortenson, text: Greetings from Bozeman! Just got off the phone with new CAI Pakistan Project Manager Ghulam Parvi. (He says thank you, his phone is working well!) Parvi said that a local sher, sher, a religious leader who doesn't like the idea of us educating girls, just declared a a religious leader who doesn't like the idea of us educating girls, just declared a fatwa fatwa on me, trying to prevent CAI from building any more schools in Pakistan. FYI: a on me, trying to prevent CAI from building any more schools in Pakistan. FYI: a fatwa fatwa is a religious ruling. And Pakistan is ruled by civil law, but also by Shariat, which is a system of Islamic law like they have in Iran. is a religious ruling. And Pakistan is ruled by civil law, but also by Shariat, which is a system of Islamic law like they have in Iran.

"In the small mountain villages where we work, a local mullah, even a crooked one, has more power than the Pakistani government. Parvi asked if I wanted to bribe him. (I said no way Jose.) Anyway, this guy can cause a lot of problems for us. I asked Parvi to see if some bigshot mullah might be able to overrule him and I'll let you know what he finds out. But this means I'll probably have to go back over there soon to sort it out, Inshallah. Inshallah. Peace, Greg." Peace, Greg."

Jean h.o.e.rni had left Mortenson $22,315 in his will, the amount of Mortenson's own money the old scientist judged his young friend had spent in Pakistan. And he left Mortenson in an unfamiliar position- in charge of a charitable organization with an endowment of nearly a million dollars. Mortenson asked h.o.e.rni's widow, Jennifer Wilson, to serve on a newly formed board of directors, along with his old friend Tom Vaughan, the pulmonologist and climber from Marin County who'd helped talk Mortenson through his darkest days in Berkeley. Dr. Andrew Marcus, the chairman of Montana State's Earth Sciences Department, agreed to serve as well. But the most surprising addition to the board came in the form of Jennifer Wilson's cousin, Julia Bergman.

In October 1996, Bergman had been traveling in Pakistan with a group of friends who chartered a huge Russian MI-17 helicopter out of Skardu in hopes of getting a glimpse of K2. On the way back the pilot asked if they wanted to visit a typical village. They happened to land just below Korphe, and when local boys learned Bergman was American they took her hand and led her to see a curious new tourist attraction- a st.u.r.dy yellow school built by another American, which stood where none had ever been before, in a small village called Korphe. group of friends who chartered a huge Russian MI-17 helicopter out of Skardu in hopes of getting a glimpse of K2. On the way back the pilot asked if they wanted to visit a typical village. They happened to land just below Korphe, and when local boys learned Bergman was American they took her hand and led her to see a curious new tourist attraction- a st.u.r.dy yellow school built by another American, which stood where none had ever been before, in a small village called Korphe.

"I looked at a sign in front of the school and saw that it had been donated by Jean h.o.e.rni, my cousin Jennifer's husband," Bergman says. "Jennifer told me Jean had been trying to build a school somewhere in the Himalaya, but to land in that exact spot in a range that stretches thousands of miles felt like more than a coincidence. I'm not a religious person," Bergman says, "but I felt I'd been brought there for a reason and I couldn't stop crying."

A few months later, at h.o.e.rni's memorial service, Bergman introduced herself to Mortenson. "I was there!" she said, wrapping the startled man she'd just met in a bruising hug. "I saw the school!"

"You're the blonde in the helicopter," Mortenson said, shaking his head in amazement. "I heard a foreign woman had been in the village but I didn't believe it!"

"There's a message here. This is meant to be," Julia Bergman said. "I want to help. Is there anything I can do?"

"Well, I want to collect books and create a library for the Korphe School," Mortenson said.

Bergman felt the same sense of predestination she'd encountered that day in Korphe. "I'm a librarian," she said.

After sending his e-mail to Bergman and the other board members, Mortenson wrote letters to a helpful government minister he'd met on his last trip and to Mohammed Niaz, Skardu's director of education, asking for advice about the sher sher of Chakpo. Then he knelt in the dim light from his desk lamp and searched through the towering stacks of books leaning against the walls, before he found what he was looking for, a of Chakpo. Then he knelt in the dim light from his desk lamp and searched through the towering stacks of books leaning against the walls, before he found what he was looking for, a fakhir fakhir-a scholarly treatise on the application of Islamic law in modern society, translated from the Farsi. He demolished four cups of coffee, reading intently, until he heard Tara's feet on the kitchen floor above his head.

Tara sat at the kitchen table, nursing Amira and a tall mug of latte. Mortenson didn't want to disturb the tranquil scene with what he had to say. He kissed his wife good morning before breaking the news. "I have to go over there sooner than we planned," he said.

On a frosty March morning in Skardu, Mortenson's supporters met for tea at his informal headquarters, the lobby of the Indus Hotel. The Indus suited Mortenson perfectly. Unlike Skardu's handful of tourist resorts, which were hidden away among idyllic landscaped grounds, this clean and inexpensive hotel sat on Skardu's main road without pretension, between Changazi's compound and a PSO gas station, mere feet from the Bedfords rumbling by on their way back to Islamabad.

In the lobby, under a bulletin board where climbers posted pictures from recent expeditions, two long wood plank tables were perfect for accommodating the lengthy tea parties it took to do any sort of business in town. This morning, eight of Mortenson's supporters sat around a table, spreading Chinese jam on the hotel's excellent chapatti, chapatti, and sipping milk tea the way Parvi preferred it-painfully sweet. and sipping milk tea the way Parvi preferred it-painfully sweet.

Mortenson marveled at how efficiently he'd been able to summon these men from the far corners of northern Pakistan, even though their distant valleys didn't have phones. It might take a week from the time he sent a note with a jeep driver to the day the person he'd summoned arrived in Skardu, but in an era before satellite phones became common in this part of the world, there was no other way to defeat the rugged distance of these ranges.

From the Hushe Valley, a hundred miles east, Mouzafer had made his way to this convivial table with his friend, an old-time porter and base camp cook of wide renown known as "Apo," or "Old Man" Razak. Next to them, Haji Ali and Twaha wolfed their breakfast, glad of the excuse to leave the Braldu Valley to the north, which was still mired in snow of midwinter depth. And Faisal Baig had strolled into the lobby just that morning, after traveling more than two hundred miles from the rugged Charpurson Valley to the west, on the border of Afghanistan.

Mortenson had arrived two days earlier, after a forty-eight-hour bus trip up the Karakoram Highway, traveling with the newest addition to his odd band, a forty-year-old Rawalpindi taxi driver named Suleman Minhas. After Mortenson's kidnapping, Suleman had chanced to pick him up at the Islamabad airport.

On the drive to his hotel, Mortenson related the details of his recent detention in Waziristan, and Suleman, enraged that his countrymen had put a guest through such an inhospitable ordeal, had turned as protective as a mother hen. He convinced Mortenson to stay at an inexpensive guest house he knew in Islamabad, in a much safer location than his old standby, the Khyaban, where sectarian bomb blasts had begun terrorizing the neighborhood nearly every Friday after Juma Juma prayers. prayers.

Suleman had returned each day to monitor Mortenson's recovery, bringing him bags of sweets and medicines for the parasites Mortenson had picked up in Waziristan and taking him out for meals at his favorite Kabuli sidewalk barbecue. After their taxi had been stopped by a police roadblock on the way to the airport for Mortenson's flight home, Suleman had talked his way past the police with such easygoing charm that Mortenson offered him a job as CAI's "fixer" in Islamabad before getting on his flight.

In the Indus lobby, Suleman sat like a smiling Buddha next to Mortenson, his arms crossed over the beginning of a pot belly, entertaining the whole table between puffs of the Marlboros Mortenson had brought him from America with tales of the life of a big-city taxi driver. A member of Pakistan's Punjabi majority, he had never been to the mountains before and rattled volubly on, relieved that these men who lived at the edge of the known world spoke Urdu in addition to their native tongues.

Mohammed Ali Changazi walked past in his white robes, visible through the gla.s.s walls of the lobby, and old Apo Razak, with a jester's leer blooming below his hooked nose, leaned forward and told the men a rumor about Changazi's successful conquest of two different German sisters who'd come to Skardu on the same expedition.

"Yes, I can see he's a very religious man," Suleman said in Urdu, waggling his head for emphasis, playing to the table. "He must pray six times a day. And wash this six times each day also," he said pointing to his lap. The roar of laughter all around the table told Mortenson his instincts had served him well in a.s.sembling this mismatched group.

Mouzafer and the Korphe men were s.h.i.+te Muslims, along with Skardu residents Ghulam Parvi, and Makhmal the mason. Apo Razak, a refugee from Indian-occupied Kashmir, was a Sunni, as was Suleman.

And the fiercely dignified bodyguard Faisal Baig belonged to the Ismaeli sect. "We all sat there laughing and sipping tea peacefully," Mortenson says. "An infidel and representatives from three warring sects of Islam. And I thought if we can get along this well, we can accomplish anything. The British policy was 'divide and conquer.' But I say 'unite and conquer.' "

Ghulam Parvi spoke calmly to the group about the fatwa, fatwa, his anger having cooled to practicality. He told Mortenson he had arranged a meeting for him with Syed Abbas Risvi, the religious leader of northern Pakistan's s.h.i.+a Muslims. "Abbas is a good man, but suspicious of foreigners," Parvi said. "When he sees that you respect Islam and our ways he can be of much help, his anger having cooled to practicality. He told Mortenson he had arranged a meeting for him with Syed Abbas Risvi, the religious leader of northern Pakistan's s.h.i.+a Muslims. "Abbas is a good man, but suspicious of foreigners," Parvi said. "When he sees that you respect Islam and our ways he can be of much help, Inshallah. Inshallah."

Parvi also said that Sheikh Mohammed, a religious scholar and rival of the sher sher of Chakpo, had, along with his son, Mehdi Ali, pet.i.tioned for a CAI school to be built in his village of Hemasil and written a letter to the Supreme Council of Ayatollahs in Qom, asking Iran's leading clerics, the ultimate authority to the world's s.h.i.+a, to rule on whether the of Chakpo, had, along with his son, Mehdi Ali, pet.i.tioned for a CAI school to be built in his village of Hemasil and written a letter to the Supreme Council of Ayatollahs in Qom, asking Iran's leading clerics, the ultimate authority to the world's s.h.i.+a, to rule on whether the fatwa fatwa was justified. was justified.

Haji Ali announced he'd met with the elders of all the Braldu villages and they had selected Pakhora, an especially impoverished community in the Lower Braldu Valley, governed by his close friend Haji Mousin, as their choice for the site of the CAI's second school.

Makhmal the mason, who'd done such a professional job in Korphe, requested a school for his home village of Ranga, on the outskirts of Skardu, and said his extended family, all skilled construction workers, could be counted on to complete the project quickly.

Mortenson imagined how happy h.o.e.rni would have been to sit at such a table. His advice about not holding grudges against the villages that competed in the tug-of-war for the first school rang clearly in Mortenson's ears: "The children of all those other villages that tried to bribe you need schools, too."

Mortenson thought of the goatherding children he'd taught the day he bolted out of Changazi's banquet, of the thirsty way they gulped down even his goofy lesson about the English name for "nose," and proposed building a school in Kuardu, Changazi's village, since the elders had already agreed to donate land.

"So, Dr. Greg," Ghulam Parvi said, his pen tip tapping at the tablet where he'd been taking notes. "Which school will we build this year?" tablet where he'd been taking notes. "Which school will we build this year?"

"All of them, Inshallah, Inshallah," Mortenson said.

Greg Mortenson felt that his life was speeding up. He had a house, a dog, a family, and before he'd left, he and Tara had discussed having more children. He'd built one school, been threatened by an enraged mullah, a.s.sembled an American board and a scruffy Pakistani staff. He had fifty thousand dollars of CAI's money in his rucksack and more in the bank. The neglect and suffering northern Pakistan's children endured towered as high as the mountains encircling Skardu. With the fatwa fatwa dangling over his head like a scimitar, who knew how long he would be allowed to work in Pakistan? Now was the time to act with all the energy he could summon. dangling over his head like a scimitar, who knew how long he would be allowed to work in Pakistan? Now was the time to act with all the energy he could summon.

For fifty-eight hundred dollars, Mortenson bought an army-green, twenty-year-old Toyota Land Cruiser with the low-end torque to rumble over any obstacle the Karakoram highways could throw at him. He hired a calm, experienced chain-smoking driver named Hussain, who promptly bought a box of dynamite and stowed it under the pa.s.senger seat, so they could blast their way through landslides without waiting for government road crews. And with Parvi and Makhmal bargaining ruthlessly by his side, Mortenson purchased enough construction supplies from the merchants of Skardu to break ground on three schools as soon as the soil thawed.

For the second time in Greg Mortenson's life, a gas station proved pivotal to his involvement with Islam. One warm April afternoon, standing in a fine drizzle by the pumps of the PSO petrol station, Mortenson met Syed Abbas Risvi. Parvi explained that it was best that they meet in a public place, until the mullah had made up his mind about the infidel, and suggested this busy lot near Mortenson's hotel.

Abbas arrived with two younger a.s.sistants, both lavishly bearded, who hovered protectively. He was tall and thin, with the trimmed beard of the s.h.i.+a scholar who had outshone most of his peers at madra.s.sa madra.s.sa in Najaf, Iraq. He wore a severe black turban wrapped tightly around his high brow and studied the large American wearing Pakistani clothes through a set of square, old-fas.h.i.+oned spectacles, before offering his hand for a firm shake. in Najaf, Iraq. He wore a severe black turban wrapped tightly around his high brow and studied the large American wearing Pakistani clothes through a set of square, old-fas.h.i.+oned spectacles, before offering his hand for a firm shake.

"As-Salaam Alaaik.u.m," Mortenson said, bowing with his hand held respectfully over his heart. "It's a great honor to meet you, Syed Abbas," he continued in Balti. "Mr. Parvi has told me much about your wisdom and compa.s.sion for the poor." Mortenson said, bowing with his hand held respectfully over his heart. "It's a great honor to meet you, Syed Abbas," he continued in Balti. "Mr. Parvi has told me much about your wisdom and compa.s.sion for the poor."

"There are certain Europeans who come to Pakistan determined to tear Islam down," Syed Abbas says. "And I was worried, at first, that Dr. Greg was one of them. But I looked into his heart that day at the petrol pump and saw him for what he is-an infidel, but a n.o.ble man nonetheless, who dedicates his life to the education of children. I decided on the spot to help him in any way I could."

It had taken Mortenson more than three years, years of false steps, failures, and delays, to drive the Korphe School from promise to completion. Having taken his mistakes to heart, with the money finally to make his vision a reality and a staff and army of volunteers who were pa.s.sionately dedicated to improving the lives of Balti children, Greg Mortenson's CAI built three more primary schools in only three months.

Makhmal was true to his word. He and his family of Kashmiri masons spearheaded the a.s.sault on the school in their village of Ranga, constructing a replica of the Korphe School in only ten weeks. In a place where schools often took years to complete, this pace was unprecedented. Though their village was only eight miles outside Skardu, Ranga's children had been offered no education by the government. Unless they could afford the cost of transportation to, and fees for, private schools in Skardu, the children of Ranga had remained uneducated. After one spring of furious labor, the fortunes of Ranga's children had been changed forever.

In Pakhora, Haji Ali's friend Haji Mousin made the most of the opportunity for his village. Convincing many of the Pakhora men not to take jobs as expedition porters until the school was built, Pakhora's nurmadhar nurmadhar a.s.sembled a large and enthusiastic crew of unskilled laborers. Zaman, a local contractor, turned down a construction job for the army and led the effort to build a beautiful U-shaped stone school, shaded by a grove of poplars. "Zaman did an incredible job," Mortenson says. "In one of the most remote villages of northern Pakistan, he built a school in twelve weeks that was vastly superior to anything the Pakistani government could have built, and at half the cost of a project that would have taken the government years to finish." a.s.sembled a large and enthusiastic crew of unskilled laborers. Zaman, a local contractor, turned down a construction job for the army and led the effort to build a beautiful U-shaped stone school, shaded by a grove of poplars. "Zaman did an incredible job," Mortenson says. "In one of the most remote villages of northern Pakistan, he built a school in twelve weeks that was vastly superior to anything the Pakistani government could have built, and at half the cost of a project that would have taken the government years to finish."

In Changazi's village of Kuardu, elders were so determined to make their school a success that they donated a plot for it at the very center of the settlement and demolished a two-story stone house so the school could sit on prime real estate. Like everything a.s.sociated with Changazi, the Kuardu School's trappings were made to exceed the local standard. Kuardu's men built a solid stone foundation six feet deep and constructed the stone walls double-width, determined the school should stand proudly at the center of village life forever. make their school a success that they donated a plot for it at the very center of the settlement and demolished a two-story stone house so the school could sit on prime real estate. Like everything a.s.sociated with Changazi, the Kuardu School's trappings were made to exceed the local standard. Kuardu's men built a solid stone foundation six feet deep and constructed the stone walls double-width, determined the school should stand proudly at the center of village life forever.

All spring and summer, Mortenson whirled around Baltistan like a dervish in a green Land Cruiser. He and his crew delivered bags of cement when the various construction sites fell short, drove Makhmal up the Braldu to adjust a set of ill-fitting roof beams at Pakhora, and buzzed over to the woodshop in Skardu to check on the progress of five hundred students' desks he was having constructed.

When it was clear all the school projects would be completed ahead of time, Mortenson launched an ambitious array of new initiatives. Parvi alerted Mortenson that more than fifty girls had been studying in cramped conditions in a one-room school on the south bank of the Indus, in the village of Torghu Balla. With supplies left over from the other building projects, Mortenson saw that a two-room extension was added to the school.

On a trip to visit Mouzafer's village, Halde, in the Hushe Valley, where he promised village elders he'd construct a school the following year, Mortenson learned of a crisis at an existing government school in nearby Khanday village. In Khanday, a dedicated local teacher named Ghulam was struggling to hold cla.s.ses for ninety-two students, despite not having received a paycheck from the government for more than two years. An outraged Mortenson offered to pay Ghulam's salary, and hire two more teachers to reduce Khanday's student-teacher ratio to a reasonable level.

During his travels, Syed Abbas had heard hundreds of Balti praising Mortenson's character and speaking glowingly of the endless acts of zakat zakat Mortenson had performed in his time among them. Syed Ab-bas sent a messenger to the Indus Hotel inviting Mortenson to his home. Mortenson had performed in his time among them. Syed Ab-bas sent a messenger to the Indus Hotel inviting Mortenson to his home.

Mortenson, Parvi, and the religious leader sat cross-legged on the floor of Syed Abbas's reception room, on especially fine Iranian carpets, while Abbas's son brought them green tea in pink porcelain cups and sugar cookies on a wayward Delft tray decorated with windmills.

"I've contacted the sher sher of Chakpo and asked him to withdraw his of Chakpo and asked him to withdraw his fatwa, fatwa," Syed Abbas said, sighing, "but he refused. This man doesn't follow Islam. He follows his own mind. He wants you banished from Pakistan."

"If you think I'm doing anything against Islam, tell me to leave Pakistan forever and I will," Mortenson said.

"Continue your work," Syed Abbas said. "But stay away from Chakpo. I don't think you're in danger, but I can't be certain." Pak-istan's supreme s.h.i.+a cleric handed Mortenson an envelope. "I've prepared a letter for you stating my support. It may be helpful, Inshallah, Inshallah, with some of the other village mullahs." with some of the other village mullahs."

Skirting Chakpo, Mortenson returned by Land Cruiser to Korphe, to arrange an inauguration ceremony for the school. While he held a meeting on the roof with Haji Ali, Twaha, and Hussein, Hussein's wife, Hawa, and Sakina sat boldly down with the men and asked if they could speak. "We appreciate everything you're doing for our children," Hawa said. "But the women want me to ask you for something more."

"Yes?" Mortenson said.

"Winter here is very hard. We sit all day like animals in the cold months, with nothing to do. Allah willing, we'd like a center for the women, a place to talk and sew."

Sakina tugged Haji Ali's beard teasingly. "And to get away from our husbands."

By August, with guests due to arrive for the school-opening ceremony, Hawa presided glowingly over the new Korphe Women's Vocational Center. In a disused room at the back of Haji Ali's home, Korphe's women gathered each afternoon, learning to use the four new Singer hand-crank sewing machines Mortenson purchased, under the tutelage of Fida, a master Skardu tailor who'd transported bales of fabric, boxes of thread, and the machines, tenderly, on their trip "upside."

"Balti already had a rich tradition of sewing and weaving," Mortenson says. "They just needed some help to revive the dying practice. Hawa's idea was such an easy way to empower women that I decided from that day on to put in vocational centers wherever we built schools."

In early August 1997, Greg Mortenson rode triumphantly up the Braldu Valley in a convoy of jeeps. In the green Land Cruiser sat Tara, and on her lap, Amira Mortenson, not yet one. Their entourage included police officers, army commanders, local politicians, and board members Jennifer Wilson and Julia Bergman, who'd spent months a.s.sembling a collection of culturally appropriate books to create a library for Korphe.

"It was incredible to finally see the place Greg had talked so pa.s.sionately about for years," Tara says. "It made a whole part of my husband more real to me."

The jeeps parked by the bridge and, as the procession of Westerners crossed it, the people of Korphe cheered their arrival from the bluff above. The small yellow school, freshly painted for the occasion and festooned with banners and Pakistani flags, was clearly visible as the group climbed to Korphe.

Two years later, when Mortenson's mother, Jerene, visited Korphe, she remembers being overwhelmed by the sight of her son's labors. "After I saw the school way off in the distance, I cried all the way up," Jerene says. "I knew how much of his heart Greg had put into building it-how hard he worked and how much he cared. When your kids accomplish something it means much more than anything you've done."

"The day of the inauguration, we met Haji Ali and his wife, and the whole village competed to take turns holding Amira," Tara says. "She was in heaven, a little blonde toy everyone wanted to play with."

The school was buffed to perfection. Dozens of new wooden desks sat in each cla.s.sroom, on carpets thick enough to s.h.i.+eld students' feet from the cold. Colorful world maps and portraits of Pak-istan's leaders decorated the walls. And in the courtyard, on a stage beneath a large hand-lettered banner proclaiming "Welcome Cherished Guests," the speeches went on for hours beneath an untempered sun, while sixty Korphe students squatted patiently on their heels.

"It was the most exciting day of my life," says schoolmaster Hus-sein's daughter, Tahira. "Mr. Parvi handed each of us new books and I didn't dare to open them, they were so beautiful. I'd never had my own books before."

Jennifer Wilson wrote a speech about how much her husband, Jean h.o.e.rni, would have loved to see this day in person, and had Ghulam Parvi render it into phonetic Balti so she could directly address the crowd. Then she handed each student a crisp new school uniform, neatly folded inside its cellophane wrapper.

"I couldn't take my eyes off all the foreign ladies," says Jahan, who, along with Tahira, would one day become the first educated woman in the long history of the Braldu Valley. "They seemed so dignified. Whenever I'd seen people from downside before, I'd run away, ashamed of my dirty clothes. But that day I held the first set of clean, new clothes I'd ever owned," Jahan says. "And I remember thinking, 'Maybe I shouldn't feel so ashamed. Maybe, one day, Allah willing, I can become a great lady, too.' "

Master Hussein, and the two new teachers who'd come to work with him, made speeches, as did Haji Ali and each of the visiting dignitaries. Everyone expect for Greg Mortenson. "While the speeches went on Greg stood in the background, against a wall," Tara says, "holding a baby someone had handed him. It was the most filthy baby I'd ever seen, but he didn't seem to notice. He just stood there happily, bouncing it in his arms. And I told myself, 'That's the essence of Greg right there. Always remember this moment.' "

For the first time in recorded history, the children of Korphe village began the daily task of learning to read and write in a building that kept the elements at bay. With Jennifer Wilson, Mortenson poured Jean h.o.e.rni's ashes off the bridge the scientist had paid to build, into the rus.h.i.+ng waters of the Braldu River. Then Mortenson returned to Skardu with his family. During the days he spent showing Tara around his adopted hometown, driving into Skardu's southern hills to share a meal at Parvi's house, or hiking up to crystalline Satpara Lake south of town, he became convinced he was being followed by an agent of Pak-istan's feared intelligence service, the ISI.

"The guy they a.s.signed to tail me must not have been very high up in the organization," Mortenson says, "because he was poor at his job. He had bright red hair and wobbled around on his red Suzuki motorcycle so it was impossible to miss him. And every time I'd turn around, there he would be, smoking, trying to look like he wasn't watching me. I had nothing to hide, so I decided I might as well let him figure that out and report back to his superiors."

Another Skardu resident paid uncomfortably close attention to Mortenson's family, too. One afternoon, Mortenson left Tara and Amira in the rear seat of his Land Cruiser while he stopped to buy bottles of mineral water in Skardu's bazaar. Tara took advantage of the time alone to nurse Amira discreetly. When Mortenson returned, he saw a young man pressing his face to the Land Cruiser's window, leering in at his wife. His bodyguard Faisal Baig saw the voyeur, too, and got to him before Mortenson could.

"Faisal dragged the guy around a corner, into an alley, so Tara wouldn't have to be degraded by watching, and beat him unconscious," Mortenson says. "I ran over and asked Faisal to stop. And I checked his pulse, making sure he hadn't killed him."

Mortenson wanted to take the man to a hospital. But Baig kicked and spat on the man's p.r.o.ne figure when Mortenson suggested helping him and insisted that he remain where he belonged, lying in the gutter. "This shetan, shetan, this devil, is lucky I didn't kill him," Baig said. "If I did, no one in Skardu would disagree." Years later, Mortenson learned that the man had been so ostracized in Skardu after word spread about how he had disrespected the wife of Dr. Greg that he was forced to move out of town. this devil, is lucky I didn't kill him," Baig said. "If I did, no one in Skardu would disagree." Years later, Mortenson learned that the man had been so ostracized in Skardu after word spread about how he had disrespected the wife of Dr. Greg that he was forced to move out of town.

After putting his wife and daughter safely on a plane home, Mortenson stayed on in Pakistan for two more months. The success of the Women's Vocational Center led the men of Korphe to ask if there wasn't something Mortenson could do to help them earn extra money, too.

With Tara's brother, Brent Bishop, Mortenson organized Paki-stan's first porter-training program, the Karakoram Porter Training and Environmental Inst.i.tute. Bishop, a successful Everest climber like his late father, convinced one of his sponsors, Nike, to donate funds and equipment for the effort. "Balti porters worked gallantly in some of the harshest alpine terrain on earth," Mortenson says. "But they had no mountaineering training." On an expedition led and organized by Mouzafer, Mortenson, Bishop, and eighty porters trekked up the Baltoro. Apo Razak, a veteran at feeding large groups in inhospitable places, worked as the head cook. On the glacier, the American mountaineers taught cla.s.ses in first aid, creva.s.se rescue, and basic ropecraft.

They also focused on repairing the environmental damage done to the Baltoro each climbing season, constructing stone latrines at campsites along the glacier, which they hoped would eliminate the fields of frozen t.u.r.ds expeditions left in their wake.

And for the porters who returned after each trip up the glacier with empty baskets, they created an annual recycling program, which removed more than a ton of tin cans, gla.s.s, and plastic from K2, Broad Peak, and Gasherbrum base camps that first year. Mortenson arranged to have the recyclables transported to Skardu and saw that the porters were paid for their efforts by the pound.

When winter clasped the high valleys of the Karakoram in its annual lingering embrace, Mortenson returned home at the end of the busiest year of his life to his bas.e.m.e.nt in Bozeman.

"When I look back at everything we accomplished that year, despite the fatwa, fatwa, I have no idea how I did it, how I had that kind of energy." Mortenson says. I have no idea how I did it, how I had that kind of energy." Mortenson says.

But his hyperactive efforts had only made him more aware of the ocean of need still awaiting him. With a nocturnal flurry of phone calls to Pakistan, e-mails to his board, and countless pots of coffee, he began planning his spring a.s.sault on Pakistan's poverty.

CHAPTER 16.

RED V VELVET B BOX.

No human, nor any living thing, survives long under the eternal sky. The most beautiful women, the most learned men, even Mohammed, who heard Allah's own voice, all did wither and die. All is temporary. The sky outlives everything. Even suffering.

-Bowa Johar, Balti poet, and grandfather of Mouzafer Ali

Mortenson imagined the messenger traveling inexorably to the southeast. He envisioned the Supreme Council's ruling tucked into an emissary's saddlebags as he rode from Iran into Afghanistan, pictured a small mountain pony skirting the heavily mined Shomali Plain, before plodding up the high pa.s.ses of the Hindu Kush and crossing into Pakistan. In his mind, Mortenson tried to slow the messenger down, planted rockslide and avalanche in his path. The messenger would take years to arrive, he hoped. Because if he came bearing the worst news, Mortenson might be banished from Pakistan forever.

In reality, the red velvet box containing the ruling was mailed from Qom to Islamabad. It was flown in a PIA 737 to Skardu, and delivered to the foremost s.h.i.+a clerics in northern Pakistan for a public reading.

While the Supreme Council had pondered Mortenson's case, they had dispatched spies to inquire into the affairs of the American working at the heart of s.h.i.+a Pakistan, Parvi says. "From many, many schools, I began to get reports that strange men had visited, asking about each school's curriculum. Did the schools recruit for Christianity or promote Western-style licentiousness? these men wanted to know.

"Finally, an Iranian mullah visited me, myself, at my home. And he asked me directly, 'Have you ever seen this infidel drink alcohol, or try to seduce Muslim ladies?' I told him truthfully that I had never seen Dr. Greg take a drink, and that he was a married man, who respected his wife and children and would never Eve-tease any Balti girls. I also told him that he was welcome to come and investigate any of our schools, and that I would arrange his transportation and pay his expenses if he wanted to set out right away. 'We have been to your schools,' he said, and thanked me most courteously for my time."