mountains have been here a long time,” he said. “And so have we.” He reached for his rich brown lambswool topi, the only symbol of authority Korphe?s nurmadhar ever wore, and centered it on his silver hair. “You can?t tell the mountains what to do,” he said, with an air of gravity that transfixed Mortenson as much as the view. “You must learn to listen to them. So now I am asking you to listen to me. By the mercy of Almighty Allah, you have done much for my people, and we appreciate it. But now you must do one more thing for me.”
“Anything,” Mortenson said.
“Sit down. And shut your mouth,” Haji Ali said. “You?re making everyone crazy.”
“Then he reached out and took my plumb line, and my level and my account book, and he walked back down to Korphe,” Mortenson says. “I followed him all the way to his house, worrying about what he was doing. He took the key he always kept around his neck on a leather thong, opened a cabinet decorated with faded Buddhist wood carvings, and locked my things in there, alongside a shank of curing ibex, his prayer beads, and his old British musket gun. Then he asked Sakina to bring us tea.”
Mortenson waited nervously for half an hour while Sakina brewed the paiyu cha. Haji Ali ran his fingers along the text of the Koran that he cherished above all his belongings, turning pages randomly and mouthing almost silent Arabic prayer as he stared out into inward space.
When the porcelain bowls of scalding butter tea steamed in their hands, Haji Ali spoke. “If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways,” Haji Ali said, blowing on his bowl. “The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die,” he said, laying his hand warmly on Mortenson?s own. “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. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them.”
Three weeks later, with Mortenson demoted from foreman to spectator, the walls of the school had risen higher than the American?s head and all that remained was putting on the roof. The roof beams Changazi pilfered were never recovered, and Mortenson returned to Skardu, where he and Parvi supervised the purchase and construction of wood beams strong enough to support the snows that mummified Korphe throughout deepest winter.
Predictably, the jeeps carrying the wood up to Korphe were halted by another landslide that cut the track, eighteen miles shy of their destination. “The next morning, while Parvi and I were discussing what to do, we saw this great big dust cloud coming
down the valley,” Morten?son says. “Haji Ali somehow heard about our problem, and the men of Korphe had walked all night. They arrived clapping and singing and in incredible spirits for people who hadn?t slept. And then the most amazing thing of all happened. Sher Takhi had come with them and he insisted on carrying the first load.
“The holy men of the villages aren?t supposed to degrade them-selves with physical labor. But he wouldn?t back down, and he led our column of thirty-five men carrying roof beams all the way, all eighteen miles to Korphe. Sher Takhi had polio as a child, and he walked with a limp, so it must have been agony for him. But he led us up the Braldu Valley, grinning under his load. It was this conservative mullah?s way of showing his support for educating all the children of Korphe, even the girls.”
Not all the people of the Braldu shared Sher Takhi?s view. A week later, Mortenson stood with his arm over Twaha?s shoulder, admiring the skillful way Makhmal and his crew were fitting the roof beams into place, when a cry went up from the boys scattered across Kor-phe?s rooftops. A band of strangers was crossing the bridge, they warned, and on their way up to the village.
Mortenson followed Haji Ali to his lookout on the bluff high over the bridge. He saw five men approaching. One, who appeared to be the leader, walked at the head of the procession. The four burly men walking behind carried clubs made of poplar branches that they smacked against their palms in time with their steps. The leader was a thin, unhealthy looking older man who leaned on his cane as he climbed to Korphe. He stopped, rudely, fifty yards from Haji Ali, and made Korphe?s nurmadhar walk out to greet him.
Twaha leaned toward Mortenson. “This man Haji Mehdi. No good,” he whispered.
Mortenson was already acquainted with Haji Mehdi, the nurmad-har of Askole. “He made a show of being a devout Muslim,” Mortenson says. “But he ran the economy of the whole Braldu Valley like a mafia boss. He took a percentage of every sheep, goat, or chicken the Balti sold, and he ripped off climbers, setting outrageous prices for supplies. If someone sold so much as an egg to an expedition without paying him his cut, Haji Mehdi sent his henchmen to beat them with clubs.
After Haji Ali embraced Mehdi, Askole?s nurmadhar declined his invitation to tea. “I will speak out in the open, so you all can hear me,” he said to the crowd assembled along the bluff. “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.”
“We will finish our school,” Haji Ali said evenly. “Whether you forbid it or not.” Mortenson stepped forward, hoping to defuse the violence gathering in the air. “Why don?t we have tea and talk about this.”
“I know who you are, kafir,” Mehdi said, using the ugliest term for infidel. “And I have nothing to say to you.”
“And you, are you not a Muslim?” Mehdi said, turning menac?ingly toward Haji Ali. “There is only one God. Do you worship Al?lah? Or this kafir?”
Haji Ali clapped his hand on Mortenson?s shoulder. “No one else has ever come here to help my people. I?ve paid you money every year but you have done nothing
for my village. This man is a better Muslim than you. He deserves my devotion more than you do.”
Haji Mehdi?s men fingered their clubs uneasily. He raised a hand to steady them. “If you insist on keeping your kafir school, you must pay a price,” Mehdi said, the lids of his eyes lowering. “I demand twelve of your largest rams.”
“As you wish,” Haji Ali said, turning his back on Mehdi, to emphasize how he had degraded himself by demanding a bribe. “Bring the chogo rabak!” he ordered.
“You have to understand, in these villages, a ram is like a firstborn child, prize cow, and family pet all rolled into one,” Mortenson ex?plains. “The most sacred duty of each family?s oldest boy was to care for their rams, and they were devastated.”
Haji Ali kept his back turned to the visitors until twelve boys ap-proached, dragging the thick-horned, heavy-hooved beasts. He ac-cepted the bridles from them and tied the rams together. All the boys wept as they handed over their most cherished possessions to their nurmadhar. Haji Ali led the line of rams, lowing mournfully, to Haji Mehdi, and threw the lead to him without a word. Then he turned on his heel and herded his people toward the site of the school.
“It was one of the most humbling things I?ve ever seen,” Morten-son says. “Haji Ali had just handed over half the wealth of the village to that crook, but he was smiling like he?d just won a lottery.”
Haji Ali paused before the building everyone in the village had worked so hard to raise. It held its ground firmly before Korphe K2, with snugly built stone walls, plastered and painted yellow, and thick wooden doors to beat back the weather. Never again would Korphe?s children kneel over their lessons on frozen ground. “Don?t be sad,” he told the shattered crowd. “Long after all those rams are dead and eaten this school will still stand. Haji Mehdi has food today. Now our children have education forever.”
After dark, by the light of the fire that smoldered in his balti, Haji Ali beckoned Mortenson to sit beside him. He picked up his dog-eared, grease-spotted Koran and held it before the flames. “Do you see how beautiful this Koran is?” Haji Ali asked.
“Yes.”
“I can?t read it,” he said. “I can?t read anything. This is the greatest sadness in my life. I?ll do anything so the children of my village never have to know this feeling. I?ll pay any price so they have the education they deserve.”
“Sitting there beside him,” Mortenson says, “I realized that every-thing, all the difficulties I?d gone through, from the time I?d promised to build the school, through the long struggle to complete it, was nothing compared to the sacrifices he was prepared to make for his people. Here was this illiterate man, who?d hardly ever left his little village in the Karakoram,” Mortenson says. “Yet he was the wisest man I?ve ever met.”