Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way (13 page)

Mortenson, who has deft storytelling instincts, had foreshadowed the narrative arc of
Stones into Schools
on pages 250
–
252 of
Three Cups
. This passage recounts how, in the fall of 2000, Mortenson happened to be visiting a village in northeastern Pakistan called Zuudkhan, just below a 16,300-foot pass that marked the border with Afghanistan, when a band of Kyrgyz horsemen galloped down from the heights. They

rode
straight for him like a pack of rampaging bandits. There were a dozen of them coming fast, with bandoliers bulging across their chests, matted beards, and homemade riding boots that rose above their knees.
“
They jumped off their horses and came right at me,
”
Mortenson says.
“
They were the wildest-looking men I
’
d ever seen. My detention in Waziristan flashed in my mind and I thought,
‘
Uh-oh! Here we go again.
’”

The leader of the posse, named Roshan Khan, stood nose to nose with Mortenson and demanded,
“
We know about Dr. Greg build school in Pakistan so you can
come
build for us?
”
Khan invited Mortenson to ride back over the pass with him and remain in the Wakhan for the winter as his guest,
“
so we can have good discuss and make school.
”

Mortenson explained to Khan that his wife expected him back in Montana in a few days, so he couldn
’
t hie off to the Pamir for the winter. But he silently
“
swore to himself he
’
d find some way
”
to help Khan and his fellow Kyrgyz, and then promised he
’
d come visit Khan as soon as possible to talk about the school. Satisfied, Roshan Khan jumped on his horse and rode back over the mountains to the Wakhan, where he related the pledge he
’
d extracted from Mortenson to his father
—
a venerated figure named Abdul Rashid Khan, supreme leader of the Afghan Kyrgyz, who plays a starring role in the finale of
Stones into Schools
.

In
Stones
(pages 29
–
30), Mortenson says his encounter with Roshan Khan occurred in 1999, rather than 2000, and includes a number of details that are at odds with the account in
Three Cups
. But no matter: According to Mortenson, he had sworn a solemn oath.
“
Just as
Three Cups of Tea
began with a promise
—
to build a school in Korphe, Pakistan
—
so too does Mortenson
’
s new book,
”
proclaims the dust jacket for
Stones
:
“
to construct a school in an isolated pocket of the Pamir Mountains known as Bozai Gumbaz.
”

Sixty-four pages into the book, Mortenson expounds further on his promise to the Kyrgyz:

Roshan Khan and I enacted a ritual that I recognized from six years earlier, when Haji Ali had stood in the barley fields of Korphe and asked me to provide an assurance that I was coming back to him. The leader of the Kirghiz horsemen placed his hand on my left shoulder, and I did the same with him.

“
So, you will promise to come to Wakhan to build a school for our children?
”
he asked, looking me in the eye.

In a place like Zuudkhan, an affirmative response to a question like that can confer an obligation that is akin to a blood oath
—
and for someone like me, this can be a real problem
…
. Over the years I have missed so many plane flights, failed to appear at so many appointments, and broken so many obligations that I long ago stopped keeping track. But education is a sacred thing, and the pledge to build a school is a commitment that cannot be surrendered or broken, regardless of how long it may take, how many obstacles must be surmounted, or how much money it will cost. It is by such promises that the balance sheet of one
’
s life is measured.

By such promises, indeed.
Mortenson
’
s sacred pledge to Haji Ali to build a school in Korphe
—
to repay the villagers for their charity, and to honor his beloved sister
—
turned out to be a whopper, calculated to sell books and jack up donations. So too did Mortenson
’
s promise to construct a school in Bozai.

*
*
*

CAI had by then built several schools in Afghanistan
’
s Badakshan Province, which encompasses the Wakhan Corridor, but none of the projects was in the high Pamir, where Bozai Gumbaz is situated. Mortenson had never been to the Pamir. There are no roads there. The Wakhan Kyrgyz are nomads who migrate from place to place as they graze their herds. There was no village at Bozai; it was just an expanse of alpine meadow distinguished by a Kyrgyz burial ground and a few mud huts that remained unoccupied most of the year.
“
My job,
”
says
Callahan,
“
was to get with the Kyrgyz and figure out how to build a school for a nomadic people.
”

Callahan
’
s initial trip to the Wakhan was not propitious. In Kabul, he met Sarfraz Khan, CAI
’
s program director for northern Afghanistan, who would travel with him through the Wakhan. Right away, Callahan says,
“
it became obvious that CAI had no official presence in Afghanistan. It was this seat-of-the-pants operation
…
. Greg had spoken so highly of Sarfraz, but he can
’
t even get us seats on the flight to get up there. He
’
s like,
‘
We
’
re kind of somewhat unregistered.
’”
Fortunately, Callahan had attended prep school with the Afghan minister of transportation. He phoned the minister, who arranged for him to book two seats on a flight to Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan, Afghanistan
’
s northernmost province.

Before they flew north, however, Sarfraz learned that a crew of Pakistani workers he had hired to build some schools had gotten arrested and detained for entering Afghanistan illegally. When Sarfraz
’
s increasingly desperate attempts to get the workers released failed, he begged Callahan for help. Callahan explained the situation to his mentor, Whitney Azoy, an eminent anthropologist who ran the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies, in Kabul. Azoy hosted a dinner for an influential parliamentarian, whom Azoy introduced to Callahan and Sarfraz, and the next day the CAI workers were released. Instead of thanking Callahan for engineering a solution to this serious problem, however, Mortenson became apoplectic.
“
How dare you compromise my operation!
”
he blustered.

“
It was very odd.
”
Callahan recalls.
“
Greg was really pissed off:
‘
You guys should not have gotten the government involved in this! I do not work with the government! We deal with local power brokers; that
’
s how we get stuff done! You have now invited government scrutiny into our operation! We do not need Whitney Azoy
’
s help with anything!
’”

When Callahan told Azoy about Mortenson
’
s reaction to his gracious act, Azoy was struck with an insight:
“
Maybe Mortenson thinks he
’
s a white knight, riding in to rescue Afghanistan single-handedly,
”
he said.
 “
Afghanistan
’
s full of expats who want to be saviors. Once they get that idea in their heads, there
’
s not room for much else.
”

By the time Callahan and Sarfraz arrived in Badakhshan and started driving toward the Wakhan Corridor, Callahan
’
s assessment of Sarfraz, at least, had grown more positive.
“
He
’
s actually a very good guy,
”
says Callahan. As they slowly traveled east down the unpaved, single-lane track, they stopped to inspect several CAI schools under construction, pay laborers for work they had completed, and give them instructions for future tasks.
“
Things are going pretty well,
”
Callahan says.
“
Then we get to the end of the road, the last village, called Sarhad-i-Boroghil.
”

From there they intended to ride horses the final forty or fifty miles to Bozai Gumbaz, but someone had committed a double murder in Sarhad, and the village was swarming with police who
’
d come to investigate the crime. The police also used the investigation as a pretext to shake down the local citizenry, detaining as a suspect anyone who failed to pay. Because of this tense and potentially dangerous situation, Sarfraz decided to turn around and head back to Faizabad. Not long thereafter, he suffered an acute gallstone attack in the middle of the night, and the ailment appeared to be life threatening.