“I told her, ‘Mom, I just married the most wonderful man.’ She sounded shocked. And I could tell she was skeptical, but she gathered herself up and tried her best to be happy for me. She said, ‘Well, you’re thirty-one and you’ve kissed a lot of toads. If you think he’s your prince, then I’m sure he is.’ “
The fourth time the gray Volvo pulled up in front of British Airways, Mortenson kissed the woman he felt like he’d already known his whole life good-bye and dragged his duffel bag to the ticket counter.
“You really want to go this time?” A female ticket agent teased. “You sure you’re doing the right thing?”
“Oh, I’m doing the right thing,” Mortenson said, and turned to wave one last time through the glass at his waving wife. “I’ve never been this sure of anything.”
Chapter 12
Haji Ali’s Lesson
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.
—Helena Norberg-Hodge
AT THE DOOR to Changazi’s compound in Skardu, Mortenson was denied entrance by a gatekeeper small even by Balti standards. Changazi’s assistant Yakub had the hairless chin and the slight build of a boy of twelve. But Yakub was a grown man in his mid-thirties. He planted his ninety pounds squarely in Mortenson’s path.
Mortenson pulled the worn Ziploc bag where he kept all his important documents from his rucksack and fished through it until he produced the inventory of school supplies Changazi had prepared on Mortenson’s previous trip. “I need to pick these up,” Mortenson said, holding the list up for Yakub to study.
“Changazi Sahib is in Tindi,” Yakub said.
“When will he come back to Skardu?” Mortenson asked.
“One or two month, maximum,” Yakub said, trying to close the door. “You come back then.”
Mortenson put his arm against the door. “Let’s telephone him now.”
“Can not,” Yakub said. “The line to ‘Pindi is cut.”
Mortenson reminded himself not to let his anger show. Did everyone working for Changazi have access to their boss’s bottomless supply of excuses? Mortenson was weighing whether to press Yakub further, or return with a policeman, when a dignified-looking older man wearing a brown wool topi woven of unusually fine wool and a carefully trimmed mustache appeared behind Yakub. This was Ghulam Parvi, an accountant Changazi had turned to for help unscrambling his books. Parvi had obtained a business degree from one of Pakistan’s finest graduate schools, the University of Karachi. His academic accomplishment was rare for a Balti, and he was known and respected throughout Skardu as a devout Shiite scholar. Yakub edged deferentially out of the older man’s way. “Can I be of some assistance, sir?” Parvi said, in the most cultivated English Mortenson had ever heard spoken in Skardu.
Mortenson introduced himself and his problem and handed Parvi the receipt to inspect. “This is a most curious matter,” Parvi said. “You are striving to build a school for Balti children and yet, though he knew I would take keen interest in your project, Changazi related nothing of this to me,” he said, shaking his head. “Most curious.”
For a time, Ghulam Parvi had served as the director of an organization called SWAB, Social Welfare Association Baltistan. Under his leadership SWAB had managed to build two primary schools on the outskirts of Skardu, before the funds promised by the Pakistani government dried up and he was forced to take odd accounting jobs. On one side of a green wooden doorway stood a foreigner with the money to make Korphe’s school a reality. On the other stood the man most qualified in all of northern Pakistan to assist him, a man who shared his goals.
“I could waste my time with Changazi’s ledgers for the next two weeks and still they would make no sense,” Parvi said, winding a camel-colored scarf around his neck. “Shall we see what has become of your materials?”
Cowed by Parvi, Yakub drove them in Changazi’s Land Cruiser to a squalid building site near the bank of the Indus, a mile to the southwest of town. This was the husk of a hotel Changazi had begun constructing, before he’d run out of money. The low-slung mud-block building stood roofless, amid a sea of trash that had been tossed over a ten-foot fence topped with rolls of razor wire. Through glassless windows, they could see mounds of materials covered by blue plastic tarps. Mortenson rattled the thick padlock on the fence and turned to Yakub. “Only Changazi Sahib have the key,” he said, avoiding Mortenson’s eyes.
The following afternoon, Mortenson returned with Parvi, who produced a bolt-cutter from the trunk of their taxi and brandished it as they walked toward the gate. An armed guard hoisted himself off the boulder where he’d been dozing and unslung a rusty hunting rifle that looked more prop than weapon. Apparently phoning ‘Pindi had been possible after all, Mortenson thought. “You can’t go in,” the guard said in Balti. “This building has been sold.”
“This Changazi may wear white robes, but I think he is an exceedingly black-souled man,” Parvi said to Mortenson, apologetically.
There was nothing apologetic in his tone when Parvi turned to confront the hireling guarding the gate. Spoken Balti can have a harsh, guttural quality. Parvi’s speech hammered against the guard like chisel blows to a boulder, chipping away at his will to block their path. When Parvi finally fell silent, and raised his bolt-cutter to the lock, the guard put down his rifle, produced a key from his pocket and escorted them inside.
Within the damp rooms of the abandoned hotel, Mortenson lifted the blue tarps and found about two-thirds of his cement, wood, and corrugated sheets of roofing. Mortenson would never manage to account for the entire load he’d trucked up the Karakoram Highway, but this was enough to start building. With Parvi’s help, he arranged to have the remaining supplies sent to Korphe by jeep.
“Without Ghulam Parvi, I never would have accomplished anything in Pakistan,” Mortenson says. “My father was able to build his hospital because he had John Moshi, a smart, capable Tanzanian partner. Parvi is my John Moshi. When I was trying to build the first school, I really had no idea what I was doing. Parvi showed me how to get things done.”
Before setting out for Korphe on a jeep himself, Mortenson shook Parvi’s hand warmly and thanked him for his help. “Let me know if I can be of further assistance,” Parvi said, with a slight bow. “What you’re doing for the students of Baltistan is most laudable.”
The rocks looked more like an ancient ruin than the building blocks of a new school. Though he stood on a plateau high above the Braldu River, in perfect fall weather that made the pyramid of Korphe K2 bristle, Mortenson was disheartened by the prospect before him.
The previous winter, before leaving Korphe, Mortenson had driven tent pegs into the frozen soil and tied red and blue braided nylon cord to them, marking out a floor plan of five rooms he imagined for the school. He’d left Haji Ali enough cash to hire laborers from villages downriver to help quarry and carry the stone. And when he arrived, he expected to find at least a foundation for the school excavated. Instead, he saw two mounds of stones standing in a field.
Inspecting the site with Haji Ali, Mortenson struggled to hide his disappointment. Between his four trips to the airport with his wife, and his tussle to reclaim his building materials, he had arrived here in mid-October, nearly a month after he’d told Haji Ali to expect him. They should be building the walls this week, he thought. Mortenson turned his anger inward, blaming himself. He couldn’t keep returning to Pakistan forever. Now that he was married, he needed a career. He wanted to get the school finished so he could set about figuring out what his life’s work would be. And now winter would delay construction once again. Mortenson kicked a stone angrily.
“What’s the matter,” Haji Ali said in Balti. “You look like the young ram at th
e time of butting.”
Mortenson took a deep breath. “Why haven’t you started?” he asked.
“Doctor Greg, we discussed your plan after you returned to your village,” Haji Ali said. “And we decided it was foolish to waste your money paying the lazy men of Munjung and Askole. They know the school is being built by a rich foreigner, so they will work little and argue much. So we cut the stones ourselves. It took all summer, because many of the men had to leave for porter work. But don’t worry. I have your money locked safely in my home.”
“I’m not worried about the money.” Mortenson said. “But I wanted to get a roof up before winter so the children would have some place to study.”
Haji Ali put his hand on Mortenson’s shoulder, and gave his impatient American a fatherly squeeze. “I thank all-merciful Allah for all you have done. But the people of Korphe have been here without a school for six hundred years,” he said, smiling. “What is one winter more?”
Walking back to Haji Ali’s home, through a corridor of wheat sheaves waiting to be threshed, Mortenson stopped every few yards to greet villagers who dropped their loads to welcome him back. Women, returning from the fields, bent forward to pour stalks of wheat out from the baskets they wore on their backs, before returning to harvest another load with scythes. Woven into the urdwas they wore on their heads, winking brightly among the dull wheat chaff that clung to the wool, Mortenson noticed blue and red strands of his nylon cord. Nothing in Korphe ever went to waste.
That night, lying under the stars on Haji Ali’s roof next to Twaha, Mortenson thought of how lonely he’d been the last time he’d slept on this spot. He pictured Tara, remembering the lovely way she had waved at him through the glass at SFO, and a bubble of happiness rose up so forcefully that he couldn’t keep it to himself.
“Twaha, you awake?” Mortenson asked.
“Yes, awake.”
“I have something to tell you. I got married.”
Mortenson heard a click, then squinted into the beam of the flashlight he’d just brought from America for his friend. Twaha sat up next to him, studying his face under the novel electric light to see if he was joking.
Then the flashlight fell to the ground and Mortenson felt a sharp flurry of fists pummeling his arms and shoulders in congratulations. Twaha collapsed on his pile of bedding with a happy sigh. “Haji Ali say Doctor Greg look different this time,” Twaha said, laughing. “He really know everything.” He switched the flashlight experimentally off and on. “Can I know her good name?”
“Tara.”
“Ta… ra,” Twaha said, weighing the name, the Urdu word for star, on his tongue. “She is lovely, your Tara?”
“Yes,” Mortenson said, feeling himself blush. “Lovely.”
“How many goat and ram you must give her father?” Twaha asked.
“Her father is dead, like mine,” Mortenson said. “And in America, we don’t pay a bride price.”
“Did she cry when she left her mother?”
“She only told her mother about me after we were married.”
Twaha fell silent for a moment, considering the exotic matrimonial customs of Americans.
Mortenson had been invited to dozens of weddings since he’d first arrived in Pakistan. The details of Balti nuptials varied from village to village, but the central feature of each ceremony he’d witnessed remained much the same—the anguish of the bride at leaving her family forever.
“Usually at a wedding, there’s a solemn point when you’ll see the bride and her mother clinging to each other, crying,” Mortenson says. “The groom’s father piles up sacks of flour and bags of sugar, and promises of goats and rams, while the bride’s father folds his arms and turns his back, demanding more. When he considers the price fair, he turns around and nods. Then all hell breaks loose. I’ve seen men in the groom’s family literally trying to pry the bride and her mother apart with all their strength, while the women scream and wail. If a bride leaves an isolated village like Korphe, she knows she may never see her family again.”
The next morning, Mortenson found a precious boiled egg on his plate, next to his usual breakfast of chapatti and lassi. Sakina grinned proudly at him from the doorway to her kitchen. Haji Ali peeled the egg for Mortenson and explained. “So you’ll be strong enough to make many children,” he said, while Sakina giggled behind her shawl.
Haji Ali sat patiently at his side until Mortenson finished a second cup of milk tea. A grin smoldered, then ignited at the center of his thick beard. “Let’s go build a school,” he said.
Haji Ali climbed to his roof and called for all the men of Korphe to assemble at the local mosque. Mortenson, carrying five shovels he had recovered from Changazi’s derelict hotel, followed Haji Ali down muddy alleys toward the mosque, as men streamed out of every doorway.
Korphe’s mosque had adapted to a changing environment over the centuries, much like the people who filled it with their faith. The Balti, lacking a written language, compensated by passing down exacting oral history. Every Balti could recite their ancestry, stretching back ten to twenty generations. And everyone in Korphe knew the legend of this listing wooden building buttressed with earthern walls. It had stood for nearly five hundred years, and had served as a Buddhist temple before Islam had established a foothold in Baltistan.
For the first time since he’d arrived in Korphe, Mortenson stepped through the gate and set foot inside. During his visits he had kept respectful distance from the mosque, and Korphe’s religious leader, Sher Takhi. Mortenson was unsure how the mullah felt about having an infidel in the village, an infidel who proposed to educate Korphe’s girls. Sher Takhi smiled at Mortenson and led him to a prayer mat at the rear of the room. He was thin and his beard was peppered with gray. Like most Balti living in the mountains, he looked decades older than his forty-odd years.
Sher Takhi, who called Korphe’s widely dispersed faithful to prayer five times a day without the benefit of amplification, filled the small room with his booming voice. He led the men in a special dua, asking Allah’s blessing and guidance as they began work on the school. Mortenson prayed as the tailor had taught him, folding his arms and bending at the waist. Korphe’s men held their arms stiffly at their sides and pressed themselves almost prone against the ground. The tailor had instructed him in the Sunni way of prayer, Mortenson realized.
A few months earlier, Mortenson had read in the Islamabad papers about Pakistan’s latest wave of Sunni-Shiite violence. A Skardu-bound bus had passed through the Indus Gorge on its way up the Karakoram Highway. Just past Chilas, a Sunni-dominated region, a dozen masked men armed with Kalashnikovs blocked the road and forced the passengers out. They separated the Shia from the Sunni and cut the throats of eighteen Shia men while their wives and children were made to watch. Now he was praying like a Sunni at the heart of Shiite Pakistan. Among the warring sects of Islam, Mortenson knew, men had been killed for less.
“I was torn between trying quickly to learn how to pray like a Shia and making the most of my opportunity to study the ancient Buddhist woodcarvings on the walls,” Mortenson says. If the Balti respected Buddhism enough to practice their austere faith alongside extravagant Buddhist swastikas and wheels of life, Mortenson decided, as his eyes lingered on the carvings, they were probably tolerant enough to endure an infidel praying as a tailor had taught him.
Haji Ali provided the string this time. It was locally woven twine, not blue and red braided cord. With Mortenson, he measured out the correct lengths, dipped the twine in a mixture of calcium and lime, then used the village’s time-tested method to mark the dimensions of a construction site. Haji Ali and Twaha pulled the cord taut and whipped it against the ground, leaving white lines on the packed earth where the walls of the school would stand. Mortenson passed out the five shovels and he and fifty other men took turns digging steadily all afternoon until they had hollowed out a trench, three feet wide and three feet deep, around the school’s perimeter.
When the trench was done, H
aji Ali nodded toward two large stones that had been carved for this purpose, and six men lifted them, shuffled agonizingly toward the trench, and lowered them into the corner of the foundation facing Korphe K2. Then he called for the chogo rabak.
Twaha strode seriously away and returned with a massive ash-colored animal with nobly curving horns. “Usually you have to drag a ram to make it move,” Mortenson says. “But this was the village’s number-one ram. It was so big that it was dragging Twaha, who was doing his best just to hold on as the animal led him to its own execution.”
Twaha halted the rabak over the cornerstone and grasped its horns. Gently, he turned the animal’s head toward Mecca as Sher Takhi chanted the story of Allah asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, before allowing him to substitute a ram after he passed his test of loyalty. In the Koran, the story appears in much the same manner as the covenant of Abraham and Isaac does in the Torah and the Bible. “Watching this scene straight out of the Bible stories I’d learned in Sunday school,” Mortenson says, “I thought how much the different faiths had in common, how you could trace so many of their traditions back to the same root.”
Hussain, an accomplished climbing porter with the build of a Balti-sized sumo wrestler, served as the village executioner. Baltoro porters were paid per twenty-five-kilogram load. Hussain was famous for hauling triple loads on expeditions, never carrying fewer than seventy kilograms, or nearly 150 pounds, at a time. He drew a sixteen-inch knife from its sheath and laid it lightly against the hair bristling on the ram’s throat. Sher Takhi raised his hands, palms up, over the rabak’s head and requested Allah’s permission to take its life. Then he nodded to the man holding the quivering knife.
Hussain braced his feet and drove the blade cleanly through the ram’s windpipe, then on into the jugular vein. Hot blood fountained out, spattering the cornerstones, then tapered to pulses that slowed with the final thrusts of the animal’s heart. Grunting with effort, Hussain sawed through the spinal cord, and Twaha held the head aloft by its horns. Mortenson stared at the animal’s eyes, and they stared back, no less lifeless than they had been before Hussain wielded his knife.