Kabul"s lone customs officer slumped at his desk in the unelectrified terminal and inspected Mortenson"s pa.s.sport under a shaft of light pouring through one of the holes sh.e.l.ls had torn in the roof. Satisfied, he stamped it lazily and waved Mortenson out past a peeling likeness of slain Northern Alliance leader Shah Ahmed Ma.s.soud that his fighters had plastered on the wall when they"d taken the airport.
Mortenson had grown used to being greeted at airports in Pakistan. Arriving in Islamabad, Suleman"s grinning face was the first thing he"d see after clearing customs. In Skardu, Faisal Baig would intimidate airport security into letting him meet the plane on the tarmac, so he could begin guard duty the minute Mortenson hit the ground.
But outside the terminal of Kabul"s airport, Mortenson found himself alone with a pack of aggressive taxi drivers. He relied on his old trick of choosing the one who seemed least interested, throwing his bag in the back and climbing in beside him.
Abdullah Rahman, like most of Kabul, had been disfigured by war. He had no eyelids. And the right side of his face was shiny and tight, where he"d been scorched by a land mine that exploded on the shoulder of the road as he drove his cab past. His hands had been so badly burned that he couldn"t close them around the steering wheel. Nonetheless, he proved a skillful navigator of Kabul"s chaotic traffic.
Abdullah, like most of Kabul"s residents, held a variety of jobs to feed his family. For $1.20 a month, he worked at the city"s Military Hospital Library, guarding three locked cases of musty hardcovers that somehow had survived the time of the Taliban, who were in the habit of burning any book but the Koran. He drove Mortenson to his home for the next week, the bullet-riddled Kabul Peace Guest House, which looked as unlikely as the name sounded so soon on the heels of war.
In his small room without electricity or running water, Mortenson peered out between the bars on his windows at the injured buildings lining the noisy Bagh-e-Bala Road, and the injured citizens limping between them, trying to imagine his next move. But a plan of action was as hard to discern as the features of the women who floated past his windows in all-enveloping ink-blue burkhas burkhas.
Before arriving, he"d had a vague notion of hiring a car and heading north, trying to make contact with the Kirghiz hors.e.m.e.n who"d asked him for help in Zuudkhan. But Kabul was still so obviously insecure that heading blindly out into the countryside seemed suicidal. At night, shivering in the unheated room, Mortenson listened to automatic weapons fire echoing across Kabul and the concussions of rockets Tal-iban holdouts fired into the city from the surrounding hills.
Abdullah introduced Mortenson to his Pathan friend Hashmatullah, a handsome young fixer who"d been a Taliban soldier, until his wounds made him a liability in the field. "Like a lot of Taliban, Hash, as he told me to call him, was a jihadi jihadi in theory only," Mortenson explains. "He was a smart guy who would much rather have worked as a telecommunications technician than a Taliban fighter, if a job like that had been available. But the Taliban offered him three hundred dollars when he graduated from his in theory only," Mortenson explains. "He was a smart guy who would much rather have worked as a telecommunications technician than a Taliban fighter, if a job like that had been available. But the Taliban offered him three hundred dollars when he graduated from his madra.s.sa madra.s.sa to join them. So he gave the money to his mother in Khost and reported for weapons training." to join them. So he gave the money to his mother in Khost and reported for weapons training."
Hash had been wounded when a Northern Alliance rocket-propelled grenade exploded against a wall where he"d taken cover. Four months later, puncture wounds on his back still oozed infected pus and his torn lungs whistled when he exerted himself. But Hash was ecstatic to be free of the Taliban"s rigid restrictions and had shaved off the beard he"d been obliged to grow. And after Mortenson dressed his wounds and treated him with a course of antibiotics, he was ready to swear allegiance to the only American he"d ever met.
Like most everything else in Kabul, the city"s schools had been badly damaged in the fighting. They were officially slated to reopen later that spring. Mortenson told Hash and Abdullah that he wanted to see how Kabul"s schools were coming along, so they set out together in Abdullah"s yellow Toyota, trying to find them. Only 20 percent of Kabul"s 159 schools were functional enough to begin holding cla.s.ses, Mortenson learned. They would have to struggle to accommodate the city"s three hundred thousand students in shifts, holding cla.s.ses outdoors, or in buildings so shattered they provided only rubble around which to gather, not actual shelter.
The Durkhani High School was a typical example of Afghan students" unmet needs. The princ.i.p.al, Uzra Faizad, told Mortenson through her powder-blue burkha burkha that when her school reopened she would try to accommodate forty-five hundred students in and around the shattered Soviet-era building where her staff of ninety teachers planned to teach each day in three shifts. The Durkhani School"s projected enrollment grew every day, Uzra said, as girls came out of hiding, convinced the Tal-iban, who"d outlawed education for females, were finally gone. that when her school reopened she would try to accommodate forty-five hundred students in and around the shattered Soviet-era building where her staff of ninety teachers planned to teach each day in three shifts. The Durkhani School"s projected enrollment grew every day, Uzra said, as girls came out of hiding, convinced the Tal-iban, who"d outlawed education for females, were finally gone.
"I was just overwhelmed listening to Uzra"s story," Mortenson says. "Here was this strong, proud woman trying to do the impossible. Her school"s boundary wall had been blown to rubble. The roof had fallen in. Still, she was coming to work every day and putting the place back together because she was pa.s.sionate about education being the only way to solve Afghanistan"s problems."
Mortenson had intended to register the CAI in Kabul so he could arrange whatever official permission was necessary to begin building schools. But along with the city"s electricity and phone system, its bureaucracy was out of order. "Abdullah drove me from ministry to ministry but no one was there," Mortenson said. "So I decided to head back to Pakistan, round up some school supplies, and start helping out wherever I could."
After a week in Kabul, Mortenson was offered a seat on a Red Cross charter flight to Peshawar. After Afghanistan, Pakistan"s problems seemed manageable, Mortenson thought, as he toured the Shamshatoo Camp, making sure the teachers were receiving their CAI salaries. Between Shamshatoo and the border, he stopped to photograph three young boys sitting on sacks of potatoes. Through his viewfinder, he noticed something he hadn"t with his bare eyes. The boys all wore identical haunted looks, the kind he"d seen in Kabul. Mortenson put down the camera and asked them, in Pashto, if there was anything they needed.
The oldest, a boy of about thirteen named Ahmed, seemed relieved to talk to a sympathetic adult. He explained that only a week earlier, his father had been bringing a cartful of potatoes he"d bought in Peshawar back to their small village outside Jalalabad to sell, when he had been killed by a missile fired from an American plane, along with fifteen other people carting food and supplies.
With his younger brothers, Ahmed had returned to Peshawar, bought another load of potatoes at a discount from sympathetic vendors who had known their father, and was trying to arrange a ride back to his mother and sisters, who remained at home in mourning.
Ahmed spoke so blankly about his father"s death, and the fact that he was telling his story to a citizen of the country whose forces had killed his father made such a slight impression on him, that Mortenson felt sure the boy was suffering from shock.
In his own way, so was he. Mortenson spent three sleepless nights at the Home Sweet Home, after Suleman fetched him from Peshawar, trying to process what he"d seen in Afghanistan. And after the misery of Kabul and the refugee camp, Mortenson looked forward to visiting familiar Skardu. At least he did until he called Parvi for an update on the status of CAI"s schools.
Parvi told Mortenson that a few days earlier, in the middle of the night, a band of thugs organized by Agha Mubarek, one of northern Pakistan"s most powerful village mullahs, had attacked their newest project, a coed school that they had nearly completed in the village of Hemasil, in the Shigar Valley. They had tried to set it on fire, Parvi reported. But with the wooden roof beams and window frames not yet installed, it had blackened, but refused to burn. So, swinging sledgehammers, Agha Mubarek"s thugs had reduced the school"s walls-its carefully carved and mortared stone bricks-to a pile of rubble.
By the time Mortenson arrived in Skardu to hold an emergency meeting about the Hemasil School, he was greeted by more bad news. Agha Mubarek had issued a fatwa, fatwa, banning Mortenson from working in Pakistan. More upsetting to Mortenson was the fact that a powerful local politician he knew named Imran Nadim, pandering to his conservative Shia base, had publicly declared his support for Mubarek. banning Mortenson from working in Pakistan. More upsetting to Mortenson was the fact that a powerful local politician he knew named Imran Nadim, pandering to his conservative Shia base, had publicly declared his support for Mubarek.
Upstairs, over tea and sugar cookies in the private dining room of the Indus Hotel, Mortenson held a jirga jirga of his core supporters. "Mubarek wants a spoonful of custard," Parvi said, sighing. "This mullah approached Hemasil"s village council and asked for a bribe to allow the school to be built. When they refused, he had it destroyed and issued his of his core supporters. "Mubarek wants a spoonful of custard," Parvi said, sighing. "This mullah approached Hemasil"s village council and asked for a bribe to allow the school to be built. When they refused, he had it destroyed and issued his fatwa fatwa."
Parvi explained that he had talked to Nadim, the politician who supported Mubarek, and he had hinted the problem could be resolved with a payment. "I was furious," Mortenson says. "I wanted to round up a whattayacallit, a posse, of my allies in the military, tear into Mubarek"s village, and scare him into backing down." Parvi counseled a more permanent solution. "If you approach this brigand"s house surrounded by soldiers, Mubarek will promise you anything, then reverse course as quickly as the guns are gone," Parvi said. "We need to settle this once and for all in court. Shariat Court."
Mortenson had learned to rely on Parvi"s advice. With Morten-son"s old friend, Mehdi Ali, the village elder in Hemasil who had spearheaded the construction of the school, Parvi would press the case in Skardu"s Islamic Court, Muslim against Muslim. Mortenson, Parvi advised, should keep his distance from the legal battle, and continue his critical work in Afghanistan.
Mortenson called his board from Skardu, reporting on what he"d seen in Afghanistan and requesting permission to purchase school supplies to carry back to Kabul. To his amazement, Julia Bergman offered to fly to Pakistan and accompany him on the trip he planned to take by road from Peshawar to Kabul. "It was a very courageous thing to do," Mortenson says. "There was still fighting along our route, but I couldn"t talk Julia out of coming. She knew how the women of Afghanistan had suffered under the Taliban and she was desperate to help them."
In April 2002, blond Julia Bergman, wearing a flowing shalwar kamiz shalwar kamiz and a porcelain pendant around her neck that read "I want to be used up when I die," stepped across the Landi Khotal border post with Mortenson and climbed into the minivan Suleman"s Peshawar taxi-driver friend Monir had arranged for their trip to Kabul. The ve-hicle"s rear seats and cargo area were packed to the ceiling with school supplies Bergman and Mortenson purchased in Peshawar. Suleman, lacking a pa.s.sport, was frantic that he couldn"t come along to look after them. At his urging, Monir, a Pashtun, leaned into the minivan and squeezed the back of the Pashtun driver"s neck. "I swear a blood oath," he said. "If anything happens to this sahib and memsahib, I will kill you myself." and a porcelain pendant around her neck that read "I want to be used up when I die," stepped across the Landi Khotal border post with Mortenson and climbed into the minivan Suleman"s Peshawar taxi-driver friend Monir had arranged for their trip to Kabul. The ve-hicle"s rear seats and cargo area were packed to the ceiling with school supplies Bergman and Mortenson purchased in Peshawar. Suleman, lacking a pa.s.sport, was frantic that he couldn"t come along to look after them. At his urging, Monir, a Pashtun, leaned into the minivan and squeezed the back of the Pashtun driver"s neck. "I swear a blood oath," he said. "If anything happens to this sahib and memsahib, I will kill you myself."
"I was surprised to see that the whole border area was wide open," Mortenson says. "I didn"t see security anywhere. Osama and one hundred of his fighters could have walked right into Pakistan without anyone stopping them."
The two-hundred-mile trip to Kabul took eleven hours. "All along the road we saw burned-out, bombed tanks and other military vehicles," Bergman says. "They contrasted with the landscape, which was beautiful. Everywhere, fields were full of red and white opium poppies, and beyond them, snowcapped mountains made the countryside seem more serene than it really was."
"We stopped for bread and tea at the Spin Ghar Hotel in Jalalabad," Mortenson says, "which had been a Taliban headquarters. It looked like World War II photos I"d seen of Dresden after the firebombing. From my friends who had fled to Shamshatoo I knew the U.S. Air Force had carpet-bombed the region extensively with B52s. In Jalalabad, I was worried about Julia"s safety. I saw absolute hate for us in people"s eyes and I wondered how many of our bombs had hit innocent people like the potato salesman."
After they reached Kabul safely, Mortenson took Bergman to the Intercontinental Hotel, on a crest with a sweeping view over the wounded city. The Intercontinental was the closest thing Kabul had to fully functional lodgings. Only half of it had been reduced to rubble. For fifty dollars a night they were shown to a room in the "intact" wing, where blown-out windows had been patched with plastic sheeting and the staff brought warm buckets of water once a day for them to wash.
With Hash and Abdullah, the Americans toured Kabul"s overburdened educational system. At the Kabul Medical Inst.i.tute, the country"s most prestigious training center for physicians, they stopped to donate medical books that an American CAI donor had asked Mortenson to carry to Kabul. Kim Trudell, from Marblehead, Ma.s.sachusetts, had lost her husband, Frederick Rimmele, when, on his way to a medical conference in California on September 11, his flight, United Airlines 175, vaporized in a cloud of jet fuel against the south tower of the World Trade Center. Trudell asked Mortenson to carry her husband"s medical books to Kabul, believing education was the key to resolving the crisis with militant Islam.
In the inst.i.tute"s cavernous, unheated lecture hall, beneath a sagging ceiling, Mortenson and Bergman found five hundred students listening attentively to a lecture. They were grateful for the donated books, because they only had ten of the textbooks required for the advanced anatomy course, Mortenson learned. And the 500 future doctors, 470 men and 30 intrepid women, took turns carrying them home and copying out chapters and sketching diagrams by hand.
But even that laborious process was an improvement from the school"s status a few months earlier. Dr. n.a.z.ir Abdul, a pediatrician, explained that while the Taliban had ruled Kabul, they had banned all books with ill.u.s.trations and publicly burned any they found. Armed Taliban enforcers from the despised Department of the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice had stood at the rear of the lecture hall during cla.s.s, making sure the school"s professors didn"t draw anatomical diagrams on the blackboard.
"We are textbook physicians only," Dr. Abdul said. "We don"t have the most basic tools of our profession. We have no money for blood pressure cuffs or stethoscopes. And I, a physician, have never in my life looked through a microscope."
With Abdullah"s scarred hands steering them around bomb craters, Mortenson and Bergman toured a cl.u.s.ter of eighty villages to the west of Kabul called Maidan Shah. Mortenson knew that most of the foreign aid now trickling into Afghanistan would never make it out of Kabul, and as was his strategy in Pakistan, he was anxious to serve Afghanistan"s rural poor. The three hundred students at the Shahabudeen Middle School were in need of much more than the pencils and notebooks that Hash helped Mortenson unload from Abdullah"s taxi.
Shahabudeen teachers held cla.s.s for the younger boys in rusty shipping containers. The school"s eldest students, nine ninth-grade boys, studied in the back of a scorched armored personnel carrier that had had its treads blown off by an ant.i.tank round. Wedged carefully into the gunner"s hatch, which they used as a window, the cla.s.s displayed their prize possession-a volleyball that a Swedish aid worker had given them as a gift. "Sweetish man have the long golden hairs, like a mountain goat," one bright-eyed boy with lice jumping from his close-cropped scalp told Mortenson, showing off his progress studying English.
But it was the lack of shelter for the school"s female students that tore, particularly, at Mortenson"s heart. "Eighty girls were forced to study outside," Mortenson says. "They were trying to hold cla.s.s, but the wind kept whipping sand in their eyes and tipping over their blackboard." They were thrilled with their new notebooks and pencils, and clutched the notebooks tightly to keep them from blowing away.
As Mortenson walked back toward his taxi, four U.S. Army Cobra Attack Helicopters buzzed the school at high speed, streaking fifty feet above the terrified students with full payloads of h.e.l.lfire missiles bristling from their weapons pods. The girls" blackboard blew over in the blast of their rotor wash, shattering against the stony ground.
"Everywhere we went, we saw U.S. planes and helicopters. And I can only imagine the money we were spending on our military," Julia Bergman says. "But where was the aid? I"d heard so much about what America promised Afghanistan"s people while I was at home-how rebuilding the country was one of our top priorities. But being there, and seeing so little evidence of help for Afghanistan"s children, particularly from the United States, was really embarra.s.sing and frustrating for me."
The next day, Mortenson brought Bergman to meet the princ.i.p.al of the Durkhani School, and to drop off supplies for Uzra Faizad"s forty-five hundred students. He saw that Faizad"s students had to climb up crude log ladders into the second-story cla.s.srooms that had survived the sh.e.l.ling, because the stairs had been blown away and were not yet rebuilt, but the school was operating beyond capacity, teaching three shifts every day. Delighted to see Mortenson again, Uzra invited the Americans to tea in her home.
A widow, whose mujahadeen mujahadeen husband had been killed fighting the Soviets with Ma.s.soud"s forces, Uzra lived with nunnish simplicity in a one-room shed on the school grounds. During the time of the Taliban, she had fled north to Taloqan, and tutored girls secretly after the city fell. But now, back home, she advocated female education openly. Uzra rolled up the flap of burlap shading the single window, removed her all-enveloping husband had been killed fighting the Soviets with Ma.s.soud"s forces, Uzra lived with nunnish simplicity in a one-room shed on the school grounds. During the time of the Taliban, she had fled north to Taloqan, and tutored girls secretly after the city fell. But now, back home, she advocated female education openly. Uzra rolled up the flap of burlap shading the single window, removed her all-enveloping burkha, burkha, and hung it on a hook above one of her few worldly possessions, a neatly folded wool blanket. Then she crouched by a small propane stove to make tea. and hung it on a hook above one of her few worldly possessions, a neatly folded wool blanket. Then she crouched by a small propane stove to make tea.
"If the Taliban is gone, why do you still wear the burkha burkha?" Bergman asked.
"I"m a conservative lady," Uzra said, "and it suits me. Also, I feel safer in it. In fact, I insist that all my lady teachers wear the burkha burkha in the bazaar. We don"t want to give anyone an excuse to interfere with our girls" studies." in the bazaar. We don"t want to give anyone an excuse to interfere with our girls" studies."
"But don"t you feel, I don"t know, oppressed, having to look out through that little slit?" Bergman, an emanc.i.p.ated woman from San Francisco, asked.
Uzra smiled broadly for the first time since Mortenson met her, and as she freed herself from her burkha, burkha, he was struck by how beautiful she still was at fifty despite the hardships she"d endured. "We women of Afghanistan see the light through education," Uzra replied. "Not through this or that hole in a piece of cloth." he was struck by how beautiful she still was at fifty despite the hardships she"d endured. "We women of Afghanistan see the light through education," Uzra replied. "Not through this or that hole in a piece of cloth."
When the green tea was ready, Uzra served her guests, apologizing that she had no sugar to offer them. "There is one favor I must ask you," Uzra said, after everyone had tasted their tea. "We"re very grateful that the Americans chased out the Taliban. But for five months now, I haven"t received my salary, even though I was told to expect it soon. Can you discuss my problem with someone in America to see if they know what happened?"
After distributing forty dollars of CAI"s money to Uzra and twenty dollars to each of her ninety teachers, who hadn"t been receiving their salaries either, Mortenson saw Bergman safely onto a United Nations charter flight to Islamabad and began trying to track down Uzra"s money. On his third odyssey through the echoing halls of the crumbling Ministry of Finance, he met Afghanistan"s deputy minister of finance, who threw up his hands when Mortenson asked him why Uzra and her teachers weren"t receiving their pay.
"He told me that less than a quarter of the aid money President Bush had promised his country had actually arrived in Afghanistan. And of those insufficient funds, he said that $680 million had been "redirected," to build runways and bulk up supply depots in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar for the invasion of Iraq everyone expected would soon begin."
On the Ariana 727 to Dubai, the British Air 777 to London, and the Delta 767 to D.C., Mortenson felt like a heat-seeking missile speeding toward his own government, fueled by outrage. "The time for us to turn all the suffering we"d helped to cause in Afghanistan into something positive was slipping away. I was so upset I paced the aisles of the planes all the way to Washington," Mortenson says. "If we couldn"t do something as simple as seeing that a hero like Uzra gets her forty-dollar a-month salary, then how could we ever hope to do the hard work it takes to win the war on terror?"
It was impossible for Mortenson to aim his anger at Mary Bono. When the congresswoman"s former pop-star husband Sonny Bono, a Republican representative from Palm Springs, California, had died skiing into a tree in 1998, she was urged to run for her husband"s seat by Newt Gingrich. And like her late husband, she was initially dismissed as a joke by her opponents, before proving to be politically adept. A former gymnast, rock climber, and fitness instructor, Bono hardly resembled a run-of-the mill Republican when she arrived in Washington at the age of thirty-seven, especially when she displayed her honed physique in an evening gown at official functions.
And soon Mary Bono, with an intelligence as unsettling as her looks, was being talked of as a rising star in the Republican party. By the time Mortenson landed in her office on Capitol Hill, Bono had overwhelmingly won reelection and the respect of her peers on both sides of the aisle. And in testosterone-dominated D.C., her appearance wasn"t exactly a handicap.
"When I arrived in Washington, I had no idea what to do. I felt like I had been dropped in a remote Afghan village where I didn"t know the customs," Mortenson says. "Mary spent an entire day with me, showing me how everything worked. She walked me through a tunnel between her office and the Capitol, with dozens of other representatives on their way to vote, and along the way, introduced me to everyone. She had all these congressmen blushing like schoolboys. And me, too, especially once she started introducing me around, saying, "Here"s someone you need to meet. This is Greg Mortenson. He"s a real American hero."
In a congressional hearing room in the Capitol, Bono had arranged a lecture for Mortenson, and sent a bulletin to every member of Congress inviting them to "come meet an American fighting terror in Pakistan and Afghanistan by building girls" schools."
"After I heard Greg speak, it was the least I could do," Bono says. "I meet so many people day in and day out who say they"re trying to do good and help people. But Greg is the real thing. He"s walking the walk. And I"m his biggest fan. The sacrifices that he and his family have made are staggering. He represents the best of America. I just wanted to do what I could to see that his humanity had a chance to rub off on as many people as possible."
After setting up his old slide projector, which was held together by a fresh application of duct tape, Mortenson turned to face a room full of members of Congress and their senior staff. He was wearing his only suit, a brown plaid, and a pair of worn brown suede after-ski moccasins. Mortenson would have rather faced a sea of two hundred empty seats, but he remembered how Uzra"s innocent question about her missing salary had sent him on this mission, so he projected his first slide. Mortenson showed images of both the stark beauty and poverty of Pakistan, and spoke with growing heat about Uzra"s missing salary and the importance of America keeping its promise to rebuild Afghanistan.
A Republican congressman from California interrupted Mortenson in midsentence, challenging him. "Building schools for kids is just fine and dandy," Mortenson remembers the congressman saying. "But our primary need as a nation now is security. Without security, what does all this matter?"
Mortenson took a breath. He felt an ember of the anger he"d carried all the way from Kabul flare. "I don"t do what I"m doing to fight terror," Mortenson said, measuring his words, trying not to get himself kicked out of the Capitol. "I do it because I care about kids. Fighting terror is maybe seventh or eighth on my list of priorities. But working over there, I"ve learned a few things. I"ve learned that terror doesn"t happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren"t being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death."
Then Mortenson continued with unusual eloquence, the rawness he felt after his pa.s.sage through Afghanistan scouring away his self-consciousness. He spoke about Pakistan"s impoverished public schools. He spoke about the Wahhabi madra.s.sas Wahhabi madra.s.sas sprouting like cancerous cells, and the billions of dollars Saudi sheikhs carried into the region in suitcases to fuel the factories of sprouting like cancerous cells, and the billions of dollars Saudi sheikhs carried into the region in suitcases to fuel the factories of jihad jihad. As he hit his stride, the conference room became quiet, except for the sound of pens and pencils furiously scratching.
After he"d finished, and answered several questions, a legislative aid to a congresswoman from New York City introduced herself while Mortenson was scrambling to pack his slides. "This is amazing," she said. "How come we never hear about this stuff in the news or our briefings? You need to write a book."
"I don"t have time to write," Mortenson said, as General Anthony Zinni, the former head of CentCom, arrived surrounded by uniformed officers, to give another scheduled briefing.
"You should make time," she said.
"Ask my wife if you don"t believe me. I don"t even have time to sleep."
After his talk, Mortenson walked the Mall, wandering aimlessly toward the Potomac, wondering if his message had been heard. Knots of tourists strolled leisurely over the rolling lawns, between the frank black V of the Vietnam memorial and the white marble palace where a likeness of Lincoln brooded, waiting for time to bind up the nation"s newest wounds.
A few months later, Mortenson found himself on the other side of the Potomac, invited to the Pentagon by a Marine general who had donated one thousand dollars to the CAI after reading about Morten-son"s work.
The general escorted Mortenson down a polished marble hallway toward the office of the secretary of defense. "What I remember most is that the people we pa.s.sed didn"t make eye contact," Mortenson says. "They walked quickly, most of them clutching laptops under their arms, speeding toward their next task like missiles, like there wasn"t time to look at me. And I remember thinking I was in the army once, but this didn"t have anything to do with the military I knew. This was a laptop army."
In the secretary of defense"s office, Mortenson remembers being surprised that he wasn"t offered a seat. In Pakistan, meetings with high officials, even cursory meetings, meant, at minimum, being escorted to a chair and offered tea. Standing uncomfortably in his unfamiliar suit, Mortenson felt at a loss for what to do or say.
"We only stayed a minute, while I was introduced," Mortenson says. "And I wish I could tell you I said something amazing to Donald Rumsfeld, the kind of thing that made him question the whole conduct of the war on terror, but mostly what I did was stare at his shoes.
"I don"t know much about that kind of thing, but even I could tell they were really nice shoes. They looked expensive and they were perfectly shined. I remember also that Rumsfeld had on a fancy-looking gray suit, and he smelled like cologne. And I remember thinking, even though I knew that the Pentagon had been hit by a hijacked plane, that we were very far away from the fighting, from the heat and dust I"d come from in Kabul."
Back in the inhospitable hallway again, walking toward a room where Mortenson was scheduled to brief top military planners, he wondered how the distance that he felt in the Pentagon affected the decisions made in the building. How would his feelings about the conduct of the war change if everything he"d just seen, the boys who had lost their potato salesman father, the girls with the blowing-over blackboard, and all the wounded attempting to walk the streets of Kabul with the pieces of limbs the land mines and cl.u.s.ter-bombs had left them, were just numbers on a laptop screen?
In a small lecture hall half full of uniformed officers and sprinkled with civilians in suits, Mortenson pulled no punches. "I felt like whatever I had to say was sort of futile. I wasn"t going to change the way the Bush administration had decided to fight its wars," he says, "so I decided to just let it rip.
"I supported the war in Afghanistan," Mortenson said after he introduced himself. "I believed in it because I believed we were serious when we said we planned to rebuild Afghanistan. I"m here because I know that military victory is only the first phase of winning the war on terror and I"m afraid we"re not willing to take the next steps."
Then Mortenson talked of the tribal traditions that attended conflict in the region-the way warring parties held a jirga jirga before doing battle, to discuss how many losses they were willing to accept, since victors were expected to care for the widows and orphans of the rivals they have vanquished. before doing battle, to discuss how many losses they were willing to accept, since victors were expected to care for the widows and orphans of the rivals they have vanquished.
"People in that part of the world are used to death and violence," Mortenson said. "And if you tell them, "We"re sorry your father died, but he died a martyr so Afghanistan could be free," and if you offer them compensation and honor their sacrifice, I think people will support us, even now. But the worst thing you can do is what we"re doing- ignoring the victims. To call them "collateral damage" and not even try to count the numbers of the dead. Because to ignore them is to deny they ever existed, and there is no greater insult in the Islamic world. For that, we will never be forgiven."
After an hour, reiterating his warning about the legions of jihadis jihadis being forged in extremist being forged in extremist madra.s.sas, madra.s.sas, Mortenson wound up his speech with an idea that had come to him while touring the twisted wreckage of a home he"d seen at the site of a cruise missile strike on Kabul"s Street of Guests. Mortenson wound up his speech with an idea that had come to him while touring the twisted wreckage of a home he"d seen at the site of a cruise missile strike on Kabul"s Street of Guests.
"I"m no military expert," Mortenson said. "And these figures might not be exactly right. But as best as I can tell, we"ve launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Now take the cost of one of those missiles tipped with a Raytheon guidance system, which I think is about $840,000. For that much money, you could build dozens of schools that could provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced nonextremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?"
After his speech, Mortenson was approached by a noticeably fit man whose military bloodlines were obvious, even in the well-tailored civilian suit he wore.
"Could you draw us a map of all the Wahhabi madra.s.sas Wahhabi madra.s.sas?" he asked.
"Not if I wanted to live," Mortenson said.
"Could you put up a school next to each of the madra.s.sas madra.s.sas?"
"Sort of like a Starbucks? To drive the jihadis jihadis out of business?" out of business?"
"I"m serious. We can get you the money. How about $2.2 million? How many schools could you build with that?" the man asked. "About one hundred," Mortenson said. "Isn"t that what you want?" "People there would find out the money came from the military and I"d be out of business."
"Not a problem. We could make it look like a private donation from a businessman in Hong Kong." The man flipped through a notebook that listed miscellaneous military appropriations. Mortenson saw foreign names he didn"t recognize and numbers streaming down the margins of the pages: $15 million, $4.7 million, $27 million. "Think about it and call me," he said, jotting a few lines in the notebook and handing Mortenson his card.
Mortenson did think about it. The good that would radiate out from one hundred schools was constantly on his mind and he toyed with taking the military"s money throughout much of 2002, though he knew he never could. "I realized my credibility in that part of the world depended on me not being a.s.sociated with the American government," Mortenson says, "especially its military."
The well-attended slide shows he continued to give that year brought CAI"s bank balance up appreciably, but the organization"s finances were as shaky as ever. Just maintaining CAI"s schools in Pakistan, while launching a new initiative for Afghanistan"s children, could wipe out CAI"s resources if Mortenson wasn"t careful.
So Mortenson decided to defer the raise the board had approved for him, from twenty-eight thousand dollars to thirty-five thousand dollars a year, until CAI"s finances were on firmer footing. And as 2002 turned into 2003, and the headlines about weapons of ma.s.s destruction and the approaching war with Iraq battered Mortenson early every morning as he sat down at his computer, he was increasingly glad he"d steered clear of the military"s money. destruction and the approaching war with Iraq battered Mortenson early every morning as he sat down at his computer, he was increasingly glad he"d steered clear of the military"s money.
In those charged days after 9/11, Mortenson"s elderly donor, Patsy Collins, had urged him to speak out and fight for peace, just before she"d died, to make this time of national crisis his finest hour. And traveling across America, through the turbulence the attacks had left behind, Mortenson had certainly overcome his shyness and done his share of talking. But, he asked himself, packing his duffel bag for his twenty-seventh trip to Pakistan, preparing to take wrenching leave, once again, of his family, who knew if anyone was listening?
CHAPTER 22.
"THE E ENEMY I IS I IGNORANCE"
As the U.S. confronts Saddam Hussein"s regime in Iraq, Greg Mortenson, 45, is quietly waging his own campaign against Islamic fundamentalists, who often recruit members through religious schools called madra.s.sas. Mortenson"s approach hinges on a simple idea: that by building secular schools and helping to promote education-particularly for girls-in the world"s most volatile war zone, support for the Taliban and other extremist sects eventually will dry up.
-Kevin Fedarko, Parade Parade cover story, April 6, 2003 cover story, April 6, 2003
Hussain hit the brakes where the road ended, and his pa.s.sengers climbed out over the plastic-wrapped box of dynamite. It was dark where the dirt road they"d bounced up for ten hours petered out into a footpath between boulders-the trailhead to the High Karakoram. To Mortenson, Hussein, Apo, and Baig, arriving at the last settlement before the Baltoro was a comforting homecoming. But to Kevin Fedarko, it seemed he"d been dropped at the wild edge of the Earth.
Fedarko, a former editor for Outside Outside magazine, had quit his office job in favor of reporting from the field. And that cold September evening, Fedarko and photographer Teru Kuwayama found themselves about as far outside as it was possible to get. "The stars over the Karakoram that night were incredible, like a solid ma.s.s of light," Fedarko remembers. Then three of the stars detached themselves from the heavens and drifted down to welcome the village of Korphe"s visitors. magazine, had quit his office job in favor of reporting from the field. And that cold September evening, Fedarko and photographer Teru Kuwayama found themselves about as far outside as it was possible to get. "The stars over the Karakoram that night were incredible, like a solid ma.s.s of light," Fedarko remembers. Then three of the stars detached themselves from the heavens and drifted down to welcome the village of Korphe"s visitors.
"The headman of Korphe and two of his friends came switchbacking down the cliff above us," Fedarko says. "They carried Chinese hurricane lanterns and escorted us across a suspension bridge and up into the darkness. It was the sort of thing you don"t forget; it was like entering a medieval village, walking through stone and mud alleys by the faint light of the lamps." the darkness. It was the sort of thing you don"t forget; it was like entering a medieval village, walking through stone and mud alleys by the faint light of the lamps."
Fedarko had come to Pakistan to report a story he would eventually publish in Outside, Outside, called "The Coldest War." After nineteen years of fighting, no journalist had ever reported from bases on both sides of the high-alt.i.tude conflict between India and Pakistan. But with Mortenson"s help, he was about to be the first. called "The Coldest War." After nineteen years of fighting, no journalist had ever reported from bases on both sides of the high-alt.i.tude conflict between India and Pakistan. But with Mortenson"s help, he was about to be the first.
"Greg bent over backward to help me," Fedarko says. "He arranged my permits with the Pakistan army, introduced me to everyone, and organized helicopter pickups for me and Teru. I had no connections in Pakistan and never could have done it myself. Greg showed me an overwhelming generosity that went beyond anything I"d ever experienced as a journalist."
But as Fedarko crawled into bed that night and wrapped himself against the cold in "dirty wool blankets that smelled like dead goats," he had no way of knowing that soon, he would more than repay Mortenson"s kindness.