Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way (14 page)

“
He looked like death,
”
Callahan says.
“
He
’
s puking. He
’
s doubled over in pain. The nearest clinic was probably only ten or fifteen miles away, but
‘
T.I.A.
’—
This Is Afghanistan. The jeep that showed up doesn
’
t have working lights and the road is bad.
”
Eventually they arrived at Khundud village, the district capital, where the U.S. Agency for International Development ran a clinic. By then, says Callahan, Sarfraz was
“
in pretty bad shape.
Vomiting a lot.
Howling with pain.
At the time it seemed pretty dramatic.
”

Before arriving in Khundud, Callahan had called Mortenson with Sarfraz
’
s satellite phone, and Greg, from his home in Montana, frantically began trying to arrange an emergency helicopter evacuation. The treatment Sarfraz received at the USAID clinic greatly relieved his symptoms, however, and in the morning he no longer seemed in imminent danger. So rather than wait for a chopper, Callahan told Mortenson,
“
We
’
re going to just keep driving out of the Wakhan.
”
Callahan and Sarfraz headed down the valley with an IV in Sarfraz
’
s arm, and a few days later arrived in the city of Faizabad, where Sarfraz received further treatment and continued to recover.

Still in crisis mode, Mortenson did everything in his power to get Sarfraz on a plane from Faizabad to Kabul, to no avail. So Callahan called Whitney Azoy, who immediately booked seats on a PACTEC flight for both Callahan and Sarfraz, picked them up at the Kabul airport, and gave them a place to stay. After resting, Callahan says, Sarfraz felt fine:
“
He flashed me his trademark grin and said
‘
Moshkel nist
’—
no problem.
”
Announcing that he would seek a surgical remedy for his ailment when he arrived home, Sarfraz flew to Islamabad the following day.
“
We said goodbye,
”
says Callahan,
“
and that was it.
”

Mortenson provides a much more exciting version of this incident in
Stones into Schools
. In his account (on pages 209
–
213), when Sarfraz arrived in Faizabad, he learned from a doctor that he had a massive septic infection and needed emergency surgery. A Red Cross plane flew him to Kabul International Airport, where upon landing he was immediately whisked across the tarmac to
“
a special flight arranged by our good friend Colonel Ilyas Mirza, a retired Pakistan military aviator
…
, [which] was waiting to fly him to Islamabad. Within minutes of arriving at the Combined Military Hospital in Rawalpindi, Sarfraz was rushed directly into surgery.
”

“
Greg was working the phones hard,
”
Callahan says,
“
I
’
ll give him that. He didn
’
t sleep for two days. They were calling everyone they knew
…
. But we got out of there on our own accord.
”

Callahan left Afghanistan in June 2006. He hoped to return to the Wakhan to complete his report for CAI as soon as possible, but by summer
’
s end he
’
d heard nothing further from Mortenson about the Bozai project.
“
Greg is hot and cold,
”
Callahan remarks philosophically.
“
When you
’
ve got his attention you can expect huge email traffic, long phone calls
—
and then he
’
ll just kind of disappear and go silent.
”

In September 2006, Callahan was in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where he
’
d been awarded a fellowship at the American University of Central Asia. There was still no word from Mortenson about going back to the Wakhan, so he returned on his own initiative. After traveling overland from Kyrgyzstan to Tajikistan, he crossed the Amu Darya into Afghanistan and made his way to the high Pamir, where he introduced himself to the storied leader of the Afghan Kyrgyz, Abdul Rashid Khan. For the next two days Callahan remained at the khan
’
s seasonal camp, Karajelga
—
a clutch of felt-covered yurts near the headwaters of the Little Pamir River, nineteen miles beyond Bozai Gumbaz.

Mortenson devotes most of a chapter in
Stones into Schools
(pages 121
–
134) to the first and only time he ever met Abdul Rashid Khan
—
an accidental encounter that occurred in May 2005 in the city of Baharak, fifty miles outside the entrance to the Wakhan Corridor. According to Mortenson, he and Abdul Rashid Khan drew up a formal contract over dinner that stated, in part:

The Kirghiz people, under the leadership of Abdul Rashid Khan, hereby sign this agreement to build a four-room school at Bozai Gumbaz, Wakhan, with the assistance of the registered charity NGO Central Asia Institute.
⁹

Central Asia Institute will provide building materials, skilled labor, school supplies, and help with teachers
’
salary and training.

Seventeen months after this contract was allegedly signed, when Callahan stayed at Karajelga as Abdul Rashid Khan
’
s guest, he spoke at length with him. When Callahan told the sixty-nine-year-old Kyrgyz leader that an American charity called the Central Asia Institute intended to build a school for the Kyrgyz in the Pamir, Abdul Rashid Khan didn
’
t seem to know who Greg Mortenson was, or have any memory of ever meeting him, says Callahan.
“
Eventually he pulled out a bunch of business cards, including Greg
’
s, but that might have been the only time Greg ever came up
…
. I think at some point we all come to look the same to them.
”

To Abdul Rashid, Mortenson was just another Western do-gooder promising alms. The Kyrgyz leader wasn
’
t inclined to reject such an offer from Mortenson or anyone else
—
although, says Callahan, he would have preferred that CAI build a road to connect the Kyrgyz to the rest of Afghanistan:
“
That
’
s what they wanted more than anything else in the world
—
a road. Second, they wanted some kind of health clinic. Third, as kind of an afterthought, they wanted a school.
”
Their rationale for ranking clinics above schools, Callahan explains, was the appalling infant mortality rate in the Pamir. As one Kyrgyz elder told him,
“
If 50 percent of the children die before age five, who is there to educate?
”

At the time he interviewed Abdul Rashid Khan, Callahan
had already visited other Kyrgyz camps to gather information about what kind of school CAI should build, and where. Both Abdul Rashid and his main competitor for influence in the Pamir
—
an
arbob
, or chieftain, named Haji Osman
—
were in favor of a boarding school, but nobody wanted to donate a piece of land on which to construct it.
“
Everybody said that it should be built on someone else
’
s land,
”
says Callahan,
“
because if it was in one of their own camps, they would have to provide fuel to heat it, and food for the students, and all this other stuff. It sounded like a hassle to them, with little return.
”

Upon arriving back in Kyrgyzstan to complete his fellowship, Callahan submitted a twenty-one-page report to Mortenson suggesting two sites that seemed appropriate for a CAI school: Bozai Gumbaz and a place called Chelap, nine miles up the valley from Bozai. As for the type of school that should be built, Callahan observed that the nomadic, widely scattered Kyrgyz population argued
“
in favor of a boarding school, one with a dormitory (plus kitchen) attached to the main body of the school.
”
In the report
’
s conclusion, however, Callahan warned,
“
CAI will not only face the problem of constructing the schools but running them as well
…
. It is not at all clear where qualified, motivated teachers could be drawn, but it is certain that they would have to come from outside the Afghan Pamirs.
”
Establishing a successful school that the Kyrgyz would actually use, he continued,

will
almost certainly involve challenges unknown in CAI
’
s prior experience
…
. If CAI hopes to build more than just the nicest stable in the Pamirs, it will need to continually monitor the schools in order to make sure they are supplied, staffed, and run properly
…
. For these reasons, CAI should carefully consider its commitment to this project, in terms of time and resources, before any further steps are taken.

*
*
*

While traveling to and from the high country, he encountered people in the lower reaches of the Wakhan Corridor whom he had met in 2006, when he
’
d visited the western end of the Wakhan with Sarfraz. Many of these folks
—
Wakhi villagers, for the most part
—
assumed he was still working for Dr. Greg, but
“
I was quick to disabuse them,
”
Callahan says. They nevertheless deduced that he must know how to contact Mortenson, and they weren
’
t bashful about asking Callahan to forward messages, most of them gripes about CAI schools in the lower Wakhan that remained empty after construction was completed, or schools that had been
“
built in the wrong place.
”