"It is best if I don"t tell you too much," Khan shouted over the gunfire. "Let"s just say we considered other...contingencies. There was a dispute and we might have had a big big problem. But now everything is settled by jirga jirga and we"re throwing a party. A party before we take you back to Peshawar." and we"re throwing a party. A party before we take you back to Peshawar."
Mortenson still didn"t believe him, but the first handful of rupees helped to convince him his ordeal was finally over. The guard with the bullet-creased forehead stumbled toward him, his grinning face lit by both flames and hashish. In his hand he waved a wad of pink hundred-rupee notes, as filthy and tattered as he was, before stuffing them into the chest pocket of Mortenson"s shalwar. shalwar.
Mortenson, speechless, turned to Khan for an explanation. "For "A SMILE SHOULD BE MORE THAN A MEMORY"
your schools!" he shouted in Mortenson"s ear. "So, Inshallah, Inshallah, you"ll build many more!" you"ll build many more!"
Dozens of other Wazir ceased firing their weapons long enough to embrace Mortenson, bring him steaming slivers of goat, and make similar donations. As the day dawned, and his stomach and shalwar shalwar pocket swelled, Mortenson felt the fear he"d carried pressed to his chest for eight days deflate. pocket swelled, Mortenson felt the fear he"d carried pressed to his chest for eight days deflate.
Giddily, he joined in the celebration, goat grease trickling down his eight-day beard, performing the old Tanzanian steps he thought he"d forgotten to shouts of encouragement from the Wazir, dancing with the absolute bliss, with the wild abandon, bequeathed by freedom.
CHAPTER 14.
EQUILIBRIUM.
The seeming opposition between life and death is now cut through. Do not thrash or lunge or flee. There is no longer a container or anything to be contained. All is resolved in dazzling measureless freedom.
-from the Warrior Song of King Gezar Warrior Song of King Gezar
The strange subcompact parked in Mortenson"s Montana driveway displayed more mud than paint. The custom license plate said "baby catcher."
Mortenson walked into his snug home, amazed, as he was each time he entered it, that the quaint old house belonged to him. He put the grocery bags filled with things Tara had been craving-fresh fruit and half a dozen different pints of Haagen-Dazs-down on the kitchen table and went to look for his wife.
He found her in their small upstairs bedroom, in the company of a large woman. "Roberta"s here, sweetie," Tara said from her p.r.o.ne position on the bed. Mortenson, in Bozeman only a week, had been in Pakistan for three months, and was still getting used to the sight of his small wife looking like an overripe fruit. Mortenson nodded at the midwife sitting on the end of her bed.
"Hi."
"Howdy," Roberta said, in her Montana tw.a.n.g, then turned to Tara. "I"ll just fill him in on what we were dialoguing about. We were discussing where the birthing should take place, and Tara told me she"d like to bring your baby girl into the world right here, in bed. And I agreed. This room has a very peaceful energy."
"That"s fine by me," Mortenson said, taking Tara"s hand. And it was. As a former nurse he was happy to keep his wife away from hospitals. Roberta gave them a phone number and told them to call her log cabin in the mountains outside Bozeman any time, day or night, whenever the contractions began.
For the rest of the week, Mortenson hovered so protectively over Tara that she felt suffocated by his attention and sent him out walking so she could nap. After Waziristan, Bozeman"s leafy fall perfection felt too good to be true. These long walks through the charming wooded streets around his home, past Montana State students throwing Frisbees to their dogs in well-tended parks, was the antidote he needed to eight days in an airless room.
After he"d been returned safely to his Peshawar hotel, pockets crammed full of nearly four hundred dollars in pink hundred-rupee notes donated by the Wazir, Mortenson had taken Tara"s photo with him to a government telephone office and held it before him as he phoned his wife in the middle of Sunday night in America.
Tara was already awake.
"Hi, sweetie, I"m okay," he said through a crackling connection.
"Where were you, what happened?"
"I was detained."
"What do you mean detained? By the government?" He heard the tight fear in Tara"s voice.
"It"s hard to explain," he said, trying not to frighten his wife any further. "But I"m coming home. I"ll see you in a few days." On the three long flights home, he repeatedly pulled Tara"s picture out of his wallet, letting his eyes linger on it, taking long sips of medicine.
In Montana, Tara was recovering, too. "The first few days I didn"t hear from him, I figured, you know, that"s just Greg, losing track of time. But after a week I was a mess. I considered calling the State Department and talked it over with my mother, but I knew Greg was in a closed area and we could create an international incident. I felt very vulnerable, alone and pregnant, and whatever kind of panic you can imagine, I probably felt. When he finally called from Peshawar, I"d started forcing myself to face the fact that he could be dead."
At seven in the morning on September 13, 1996, exactly a year since the fateful evening at the Fairmont Hotel, Tara felt her first contraction.
At 7:12 p.m., accompanied by a tape of chanting Tibetan monks that her father had chosen, Amira Eliana Mortenson made her first official appearance on the planet. "Amira," because it meant "female leader" in Persian. And "Eliana," which means "gift of G.o.d," in Chagga, the tribal language of the Kilimanjaro region, after Mortenson"s late beloved sister Christa Eliana Mortenson. Persian. And "Eliana," which means "gift of G.o.d," in Chagga, the tribal language of the Kilimanjaro region, after Mortenson"s late beloved sister Christa Eliana Mortenson.
After the midwife left, Mortenson lay in bed, coc.o.o.ning with his wife and daughter. He placed a multicolored tomar tomar Haji Ali had given him around his daughter"s neck. Then he struggled with the cork on the first bottle of champagne he"d ever purchased. Haji Ali had given him around his daughter"s neck. Then he struggled with the cork on the first bottle of champagne he"d ever purchased.
"Give it to me," Tara said, laughing, and traded Mortenson the baby for the bottle. As his wife popped the cork, Mortenson covered his daughter"s small soft head with his large hand. He felt a happiness so expansive it made his eyes swim. It just wasn"t possible, he thought, that those eight days in that kerosene-smelling room and this moment, in this cozy upstairs bedroom in a house on a tree-lined street, snug in the embrace of his family, were part of the same world.
"What is it?" Tara asked.
"Shhh," he said, smoothing the furrow from her forehead with his free hand before accepting a gla.s.s of champagne, "Shhh."
The phone call from Seattle demonstrated the planet"s relentless march toward equilibrium. Jean h.o.e.rni wanted to know exactly when he could see a photograph of a completed Korphe School. Mortenson told him about the kidnapping and his plans to return to Pakistan after spending a few weeks getting to know his new daughter.
h.o.e.rni was so shrill and impatient about the progress of the school that Mortenson asked what was troubling him. h.o.e.rni bristled, before admitting that he"d been diagnosed with myelofibrosis, a fatal form of leukemia. His doctors told him he could be dead in a matter of months. "I must see that school before I die," h.o.e.rni said. "Promise me you"ll bring me a picture as soon as possible."
"I promise," Mortenson said, through the knot of grief that had formed in his throat for this ornery old man, this contrarian who had for some reason chosen to fasten his hopes on the unlikeliest of heroes-him.
In Korphe that fall it was clear but unseasonably cold. The weather drove the village families off their roofs early to huddle around smoky fires. Mortenson had torn himself away from his new family after only a few weeks, trying to keep his promise to h.o.e.rni. Each day Mortenson and the village men would bundle blankets over their shalwars shalwars and climb on top of the school to fit the final beams in place. Mortenson kept a nervous eye trained on the sky, worried that snow would shut them down once again. and climb on top of the school to fit the final beams in place. Mortenson kept a nervous eye trained on the sky, worried that snow would shut them down once again.
Twaha remembers being surprised by how easily Mortenson adapted to cold weather in Korphe. "We were all worried about Dr. Greg sleeping inside with the smoke and the animals, but he seemed to take no notice of these things," Twaha says. "We saw he had peculiar habits, very different from other Europeans. He made no demands for good food and environment. He ate whatever my mother put before him and slept together with us in the smoke like a Balti. Due to Dr. Greg"s excellent manners and he never tells a lie, my parents and I came to love him very much."
One evening, sheepishly, Mortenson confessed the story of his kidnapping to Haji Ali just after the chief had taken his mouthful of after-dinner naswar. naswar. The The nurmadhar nurmadhar spat the plug of tobacco he"d been chewing into the fire so he could speak more clearly. spat the plug of tobacco he"d been chewing into the fire so he could speak more clearly.
"You went alone!" Haji Ali accused him. "You didn"t seek the hospitality of a village chief! If you learn only one thing from me, learn this lesson well: Never go anywhere in Pakistan alone. Promise me that."
"I promise," Mortenson said, adding the burden of another vow to the weighty collection of oaths old men kept making him take.
Haji Ali tore off a fresh plug of naswar, naswar, and softened it inside his cheek, thinking. "Where will you build your next school," he asked. and softened it inside his cheek, thinking. "Where will you build your next school," he asked.
"I thought I"d travel to the Hushe Valley," Mortenson said. "Visit a few villages and see who-"
"Can I give you some more advice," Haji Ali interrupted.
"Sure."
"Why don"t you leave it to us? I"ll call a meeting of all the elders of the Braldu and see what village is ready to donate free land and labor for a school. That way you don"t have to flap all over Baltistan like a crow again, eating here and there," Haji Ali said, laughing.
"So once again, an illiterate old Balti taught a Westerner how to best go about developing his "backward" area," Mortenson says. "Ever since then, with all the schools I"ve built, I"ve remembered Haji Ali"s advice and expanded slowly, from village to village and valley to valley, going where we"d already built relationships, instead of trying to hopscotch to places I had no contacts, like Waziristan."
By early December, all the Korphe School"s windows had been calked and blackboards had been installed in each of the four cla.s.srooms. All that remained was nailing the sheets of corrugated metal roofing in place. The aluminum sheets were sharp-edged and could be dangerous when the wind whistling down the gorge whipped them about like saw blades. Mortenson kept his medical kit close by as he worked, having already treated half a dozen wounds inflicted by flying metal.
Ibrahim, one of the construction crew, called Mortenson down from the roof with an urgent request for medical attention. Mortenson studied this large, handsome porter, looking for slash marks, but Ibrahim clutched Mortenson"s wrist and led him toward his home. "It"s my wife, Doctor Sahib," he said, nervously. "Her baby is not good."
Ibrahim kept Korphe"s only store, a spare room in his house where villagers could buy tea, soap, cigarettes, and other necessities. In the ground-floor stable beneath Ibrahim"s living quarters, Mortenson found the man"s wife, Rhokia, surrounded by restless sheep and frantic family members. Rhokia had given birth to a baby girl two days earlier, Mortenson learned, and had never recovered. "The smell of putrid flesh was overwhelming," Mortenson says. By the light of an oil lantern, he examined Rhokia, who lay on a blood-slick bed of hay. With Ibrahim"s permission he took Rhokia"s pulse, which was alarmingly high. "She was gray-faced and unconscious," Mortenson says. "Her placenta hadn"t come out after the birth and she was in danger of dying from septic shock."
Rhokia"s grief-stricken sister held the barely conscious baby girl. The infant, too, was near death, Mortenson realized. Since the family believed Rhokia had been poisoned, they hadn"t given the baby to its mother to nurse. "Nursing stimulates the uterus, triggering it to expel the placenta," Mortenson says. "So I insisted they let the baby nurse, and I gave Rhokia an antibiotic to treat the shock." But all day, even as the infant began to regain her strength, Rhokia lay on the straw, moaning in pain when she slipped into consciousness.
"I knew what I had to do," Mortenson says. "But I was very worried about how Ibrahim would take it." Mortenson pulled the porter aside. Ibrahim was among the most worldly of Korphe"s men. He wore his hair long and shaved his face smooth, styling himself after the foreign mountaineers whose loads he carried. But he was still a Balti. Mortenson explained, quietly, that he needed to reach inside Ibrahim"s wife and remove the substance that was making her sick.
Ibrahim clapped his hands warmly on Mortenson"s shoulders and told him to do what he must. While Ibrahim held a kerosene lantern, Mortenson washed his hands with a kettle of hot water, then reached into Rhokia"s uterus and pulled the decomposing placenta out.
The next day, from the roof of the school, Mortenson saw Rhokia up and walking around the village, cooing to the healthy baby girl she carried bundled in a blanket. "I was happy that I"d been able to help Ibrahim"s family," Mortenson says. "For a Balti to let a foreign man, an infidel, have that kind of intimate contact with your wife took an incredible leap of faith. I felt humbled by how much they"d come to trust me."
From that day on, Mortenson noticed the women of Korphe describing circles in the air with their outstretched hands as he walked by their homes, blessing his pa.s.sage.
On the afternoon of December 10, 1996, Greg Mortenson crouched on the roof of the Korphe School with Twaha, Hussein, and a gleeful construction crew, and pounded the final nail into the completed building just as the season"s first snowflakes swirled around his raw, red hands. Haji Ali cheered the accomplishment from the courtyard. "I asked Almighty Allah to delay the snow until you were done," he said, grinning, "and in his infinite wisdom he did. Now come down and take some tea!"
That evening, by the light of a fire that burned in his balti, balti, Haji Ali unlocked his cupboard and returned Mortenson"s level, plumb line, and account book. Then he handed him a ledger. Mortenson leafed through it and was amazed to see neat columns of figures spanning page after page. It was something he could display proudly to Jean h.o.e.rni. "The village had accounted for every rupee spent on the school, adding up the cost of every brick, nail, and board, and the wages paid to put them together. They used the old British colonial accounting method," he says. "And they did a much better job of it than I ever could have." Haji Ali unlocked his cupboard and returned Mortenson"s level, plumb line, and account book. Then he handed him a ledger. Mortenson leafed through it and was amazed to see neat columns of figures spanning page after page. It was something he could display proudly to Jean h.o.e.rni. "The village had accounted for every rupee spent on the school, adding up the cost of every brick, nail, and board, and the wages paid to put them together. They used the old British colonial accounting method," he says. "And they did a much better job of it than I ever could have."
Down the Braldu Valley, heading for Skardu, Islamabad, and home, Mortenson"s jeep crawled through a snowstorm that announced winter had hit the Karakoram full force. The driver, an elderly man with one opaque eye, reached out the window every few minutes to knock loose the ice obscuring the wiperless windshield. As the jeep skidded along an icy ledge, high over the ravine where the Braldu was whited out, the pa.s.sengers clung to each other for comfort every time the driver took his hands off the wheel and raised them up, offering panicky prayers to Allah that he help them survive the storm. with one opaque eye, reached out the window every few minutes to knock loose the ice obscuring the wiperless windshield. As the jeep skidded along an icy ledge, high over the ravine where the Braldu was whited out, the pa.s.sengers clung to each other for comfort every time the driver took his hands off the wheel and raised them up, offering panicky prayers to Allah that he help them survive the storm.
Snow blowing sideways at fifty miles an hour obscured the road. Mortenson squeezed the wheel between his big hands and tried to keep the Volvo on the invisible pavement. The drive from Bozeman to the hospital where Jean h.o.e.rni had been admitted in Hailey, Idaho, should have taken no more than seven hours. They had left home twelve hours earlier, with a few gentle flakes drifting down through Bozeman"s bare branches. And now, at 10:00 p.m., in the full fury of the blizzard, they were still seventy miles from their destination.
Mortenson stole a glance from the snow to the child seat behind him where Amira slept. Driving through a storm by himself in Baltistan was an acceptable risk, Mortenson thought. But dragging his wife and child through this desolate, snowswept place just so he could deliver a photo to a dying man was unforgivable, especially since they were only a few miles from the site of the car crash that had killed Tara"s father.
In the shelter of a billboard announcing they were entering Craters of the Moon National Park, where he could see the shoulder, Mortenson backed the old Volvo off the road and parked with the rear of the vehicle facing the wind to wait out the whiteout. In his rush to reach h.o.e.rni, Mortenson had forgotten to put antifreeze in the radiator, and if he turned the Volvo off he was afraid it wouldn"t start. For two hours, he watched Tara and Amira sleep, keeping his eye on the dipping gas gauge, before the storm calmed enough for them to continue.
After dropping his drowsy wife and daughter at h.o.e.rni"s home in Hailey, Mortenson found the Blaine County Medical Center. The hospital, constructed to treat the orthopedic injuries of visitors to the nearby Sun Valley ski resort, had only eight rooms and this early in the ski season seven of them were vacant. Mortenson tiptoed past a night nurse sleeping behind the reception desk and walked toward the light spilling into the hall from the last doorway on the right.
He found h.o.e.rni sitting up in bed. It was 2:00 a.m.
"You"re late," h.o.e.rni said. "Again."
Mortenson shifted awkwardly in the doorway. He was shocked by how quickly h.o.e.rni"s illness had progressed. The lean intensity of his face had been winnowed down to bone. And Mortenson felt he was speaking with a skull. "How are you feeling, Jean?" he said, stepping in to rest his hand on h.o.e.rni"s shoulder.
"Do you have this d.a.m.n picture?" h.o.e.rni said.
Mortenson put his pack down on the bed, careful not to jar Ho-erni"s brittle-looking legs, mountaineer"s legs that had carried him on a circuit around Mount Kailash in Tibet only a year earlier. He placed a manila envelope into a pair of gnarled hands and watched h.o.e.rni"s face as he opened it.
Jean h.o.e.rni pulled out the eight-by-ten print Mortenson had made in Bozeman and held it up tremblingly. He squinted to study the picture of the Korphe School Mortenson had taken the morning he left. "Magnifique!" "Magnifique!" h.o.e.rni said, nodding approvingly at the st.u.r.dy b.u.t.ter-colored structure, at the freshly painted crimson trim, and traced his finger along a line of seventy raggedy, smiling students who were about to begin their formal education in the building. h.o.e.rni said, nodding approvingly at the st.u.r.dy b.u.t.ter-colored structure, at the freshly painted crimson trim, and traced his finger along a line of seventy raggedy, smiling students who were about to begin their formal education in the building.
h.o.e.rni picked up the phone by his bed and summoned the night nurse. When she stood in the doorway, he asked her to bring a hammer and nail.
"What for, honey?" she asked sleepily.
"So I can put up a picture of the school I am building in Pakistan."
"I"m afraid I can"t do that," she said with a soothing voice meant to placate the overmedicated. "Regulations."
"I"ll buy this whole hospital if I have to!" h.o.e.rni barked, sitting up in bed and scaring her into action. "Bring me a d.a.m.n hammer!"
The nurse returned a moment later carrying a stapler. "This is the heaviest thing I could find," she said.
"Take that off the wall and put this up," h.o.e.rni ordered. Mortenson pulled a watercolor of two kittens playing with a ball of yarn from its hook, pried loose the nail it hung from, and pounded the picture of the Korphe School into h.o.e.rni"s line of sight with the stapler, scattering plaster with each blow.
He turned back to h.o.e.rni and saw him hunched over the phone, ordering an overseas operator to locate a certain number for him in Switzerland. "Salut," "Salut," h.o.e.rni said finally, to a childhood friend from h.o.e.rni said finally, to a childhood friend from Geneva. "C"est moi, Jean. I built a school in the Karakoram Himalaya," "C"est moi, Jean. I built a school in the Karakoram Himalaya," he boasted. he boasted. "What have you done for the last fifty years?" "What have you done for the last fifty years?"
h.o.e.rni had homes in Switzerland and Sun Valley. But he chose to die in Seattle. By Christmas, h.o.e.rni had been moved to the Virginia Mason Hospital, high atop Seattle"s Pill Hill. From his private room, when the weather was clear, h.o.e.rni had a view of Elliot Bay and the sharp peaks of the Olympic Peninsula. But h.o.e.rni, his health rapidly fading, spent most of his time staring at the legal doc.u.ment he kept continually at hand on his bedside table.
"Jean spent the last weeks of his life revising his will," Mortenson says. "Whenever he got angry at someone, and there was usually someone Jean was mad at, he"d take this big black magic marker and cross them out of the will. Then he"d call his estate attorney, Franklin Montgomery, at any time, day or night, and make sure he cut off their inheritance."
For the last time in his life, Mortenson served as a night nurse. He left his family in Montana and stayed with h.o.e.rni round the clock, bathing him, changing his bedpans, and adjusting his catheter, glad he had the skills to make h.o.e.rni"s last days comfortable.
Mortenson had another eight-by-ten of the Korphe School framed and hung it over the hospital bed. And he hooked the video camera h.o.e.rni had given him before the last trip to Pakistan to the hospital television and showed him footage he"d taken of village life in Korphe. "Jean didn"t go quietly. He was angry about dying," Mortenson says. But lying in bed, holding Mortenson"s hand, watching a video of Kor-phe"s children sweetly singing, "Mary, Mary, had a, had a, little lamb, little lamb," in their imperfect English, his fury drained away.
h.o.e.rni squeezed Mortenson"s hand with the surprising strength of the dying. "He told me, "I love you like a son," " Mortenson says. "Jean"s breath had the sweet ketone smell people often get when they"re about to die, and I knew he didn"t have long."
"Jean was known for his scientific accomplishments," his widow, Jennifer Wilson, says. "But I think he cared just as much about that little school in Korphe. He felt he was really leaving something behind."
h.o.e.rni also wanted to insure that the Central Asia Inst.i.tute was on ground as solid as the Korphe School. He endowed the CAI with a million dollars before entering the hospital.
On New Year"s Day 1997, Mortenson came back from the cafeteria to find h.o.e.rni wearing a cashmere blazer and trousers and tugging at the IV in his arm. "I need to go to my apartment for a few hours," he said. "Call a limousine."
Mortenson convinced a startled staff physician to release h.o.e.rni into his care, and ordered a black Lincoln that drove them to the penthouse apartment on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Washington. Too weak to hold a phone, h.o.e.rni leafed through a leather-bound address book and asked, Mortenson says, to have flowers sent to several long-lost friends.
"Bon," he said, after the final bouquet was ordered. "Now I can die. Take me back to hospital." he said, after the final bouquet was ordered. "Now I can die. Take me back to hospital."
On January 12, 1997, the long and controversial life of the visionary who helped found the semiconductor industry, and the Central Asia Inst.i.tute, came to an end. The following month, Greg Mortenson purchased the first good suit he"d ever owned in his life and gave a eulogy to a crowd of h.o.e.rni"s family and former colleagues gathered for a memorial service at the Stanford University Chapel, at the heart of the Silicon Valley culture h.o.e.rni helped to create. "Jean h.o.e.rni had the foresight to lead us to the twenty-first century with cutting-edge technology," Mortenson told the a.s.sembled mourners. "But he also had the rare vision to look behind and reach out to people living as they have for centuries."
CHAPTER 15.
MORTENSON IN M MOTION.
Not hammer-strokes, but dance of the water, sings the pebbles into perfection.
-Rabindranath Tagore
At 3:00 a.m., in the Central Asia Inst.i.tute"s Bozeman "office," a converted laundry room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of his home, Greg Mortenson learned that the sher sher of Chakpo, a village in the Braldu Valley, had declared a of Chakpo, a village in the Braldu Valley, had declared a fatwa fatwa against him. It was midafternoon in Skardu, where Ghulam Parvi shouted into the phone that Mortenson had paid to have installed in his home. against him. It was midafternoon in Skardu, where Ghulam Parvi shouted into the phone that Mortenson had paid to have installed in his home.