Three Cups Of Tea Part 4

Mortenson let himself be led down a long, narrow hallway, through a thicket of wooden roof struts leaning unsteadily against the walls. He was deposited on a thick pile of faded carpets next to Ali, the proprietor, whose spotless lavender shalwar shalwar seemed a miracle amidst the dust and clamor of his business. Mortenson felt more self-conscious than ever about his own torn and grease-spotted seemed a miracle amidst the dust and clamor of his business. Mortenson felt more self-conscious than ever about his own torn and grease-spotted shalwar, shalwar, which Abdul had at least st.i.tched together until his new clothes were ready. Ali apologized that tea was not yet brewed and sent a boy running for three bottles of warm Thums Up brand orange soda while they waited. which Abdul had at least st.i.tched together until his new clothes were ready. Ali apologized that tea was not yet brewed and sent a boy running for three bottles of warm Thums Up brand orange soda while they waited.

For two crisp hundred-dollar bills, Abdul Rauf, an architect whose office consisted of a cubicle in the lobby of the Khyaban hotel, had drawn plans of the L-shaped five-room school Mortenson envisioned. In the margins, he had detailed the materials constructing the two-thousand-square-foot structure would require. Lumber was certain to be the school's single greatest expense. Mortenson unrolled the plans and read the architect's tiny printing: "Ninety-two eight-foot two-by-fours. Fifty-four sheets of four-by-eight-foot plywood sheeting." For this the architect had allotted twenty-five hundred dollars. Mortenson handed the plans to Abdul.

As he sipped at the tepid orange soda through a leaky straw, Mortenson watched Abdul reading the items aloud and winced as Ali's practiced fingers tapped the calculator balanced on his knee.

Finally, Ali adjusted the crisp white prayer cap on his head and stroked his long beard before naming a figure. Abdul shot up out of his cross-legged crouch and clasped his forehead as if he'd been shot. He began shouting in a wailing, chanting voice ripe with insult. Mortenson, with his remarkable language skills, already understood much everyday Urdu. But the curses and lamentations Abdul performed contained elaborate insults Mortenson had never heard. Finally, as Abdul wound down and bent over Ali with his hands c.o.c.ked like weapons, Mortenson distinctly heard Abdul ask Ali if he was a Muslim or an infidel. This gentleman honoring him by offering to buy his lumber was a hamdard, hamdard, a saint come to perform an act of a saint come to perform an act of zakat, zakat, or charity. A true Muslim would leap at the chance to help poor children instead of trying to steal their money. or charity. A true Muslim would leap at the chance to help poor children instead of trying to steal their money.

Throughout Abdul's performance Ali's face remained serenely disengaged. He sipped at his Thums Up cozily, settling in for however long Abdul's diatribe lasted.

Tea arrived before he could be troubled to respond to Abdul's charges. All three added sugar to the fragrant green tea served in unusually fine bone china cups, and for a moment the only sound in the room was the faint clinking of spoons as they stirred.

Ali took a critical sip, nodded with approval, and then called down the hall with instructions. Abdul, still scowling, placed his teacup by his crossed legs untasted. Ali's faintly mustachioed teenage son appeared bearing two cross-sections of two-by-four. He placed them on the carpet on both sides of Mortenson's teacup like bookends.

Swirling his tea in his mouth like an aged Bordeaux, Ali swallowed, then began a professorial lecture. He indicated the block of wood on Mortenson's right. Its surface was violated by dark knots and curlicues of grease. Porcupiney splinters stood out on either end. He lifted the wood, turned it lengthways like a telescope, and peered at Mortenson through wormholes. "Local process," he said in English.

Ali indicated the other length of wood. "English process," he said. It was free of knots, and trimmed on a diagonal with a neat rip cut. Ali held it under Mortenson's nose with one hand and fanned his other hand underneath, conjuring the Kaghan Valley, the pristine pine forest from which it had recently departed.

Ali's son returned with two sheets of plywood, which he placed atop stacked cinder blocks. He took his sandals off and climbed on top of them. He couldn't have weighed more than one hundred pounds, but the first sheet buckled beneath him, bowing with an ominous screetch. The second sheet flexed only a few inches. At Ali's request the boy began jumping up and down to drive home the point. The wood still stood firm.

"Three-ply," Ali said to Mortenson, with a disgusted curl of his lips, refusing even to glance toward the first sheet. "Four-ply," he said beaming with pride at the platform where his son still bounced safely.

He switched back to Urdu. Following his exact language wasn't necessary. Obviously, he was explaining, one could acquire lumber at a pittance. But what sort of lumber? There was the unsavory product other unscrupulous merchants might sell. Go ahead and build a school with it. It might last one year. Then a tender boy of seven would be reciting from the Koran one day with his cla.s.smates when the floorboards would give way with a fearful crack and his arteries would be severed by this offensive and unreliable substance. Would you sentence a seven-year-old to bleed slowly to death because you were too frugal to purchase quality lumber?

Mortenson drained a second cup of tea and fidgeted on the dusty pile of carpets while the theatrics continued. Three times Abdul stalked toward the door as if to leave and three times Ali's asking price dropped a notch. Mortenson upended the empty pot. Well into the second hour, Mortenson found the limit of his patience. He stood and motioned for Abdul to walk out with him. There were three dozen similar negotiations they'd have to navigate if he hoped to load a truck and leave for Baltistan the day after tomorrow and he felt he couldn't spare another minute.

"Baith, baith! Sit, sit!" Ali said, grasping Mortenson's sleeve. "You are the champion. He has already crushed my price!" Sit, sit!" Ali said, grasping Mortenson's sleeve. "You are the champion. He has already crushed my price!"

Mortenson looked at Abdul. "Yes, he says true. Greg Sahib. You will pay only eighty-seven thousand rupees." Mortenson crunched the numbers in his head-twenty-three hundred dollars. "I told you," Abdul said. "He is the good Muslim. Now we will make a contract."

Mortenson struggled to smother his impatience as Ali called for another pot of tea.

In the late afternoon of the second full day of haggling, Mortenson, swollen with tea, sloshed toward the Khyaban with Abdul on the back of a cart pulled by a small horse that looked even more exhausted than they felt. His shalwar shalwar pocket was crammed with receipts for hammers, saws, nails, sheets of corrugated tin roofing, and lumber worthy of supporting schoolchildren. All the materials would be delivered beginning at dawn the next day to the truck they'd hired for the three-day trip up the Karakoram Highway. pocket was crammed with receipts for hammers, saws, nails, sheets of corrugated tin roofing, and lumber worthy of supporting schoolchildren. All the materials would be delivered beginning at dawn the next day to the truck they'd hired for the three-day trip up the Karakoram Highway.

Abdul had proposed they take a taxi back to the hotel. But Mortenson, stung by the quick depletion of his stack of rupees every time he paid another deposit, insisted on economizing. The two-mile trip took more than an hour, through streets fugged with exhaust from black, unm.u.f.flered Morris taxis.

At the hotel, Mortenson rinsed off the dust of the day's bargaining by dumping bucket after bucket of lukewarm water over his head, not bothering to remove his shalwar, shalwar, then hurried to the tailor's hoping to retrieve his new clothes before the shop closed for Friday evening prayers. then hurried to the tailor's hoping to retrieve his new clothes before the shop closed for Friday evening prayers.

Manzoor Khan was smoothing Mortenson's completed shalwar shalwar with a coal-fired iron, and humming along to a woman's voice wailing an Urdu pop song. The tinny tune echoed through the complex from a cobbler's radio down the hall, accompanied by the melancholy sound of steel shutters being pulled down at day's end. with a coal-fired iron, and humming along to a woman's voice wailing an Urdu pop song. The tinny tune echoed through the complex from a cobbler's radio down the hall, accompanied by the melancholy sound of steel shutters being pulled down at day's end.

Mortenson slid into the clean, oatmeal-colored shalwar shalwar shirt, which was crisp and still warm from the iron. Then, modestly shielded by the knee-length shirttails, he pulled on his baggy new pants. He tied the shirt, which was crisp and still warm from the iron. Then, modestly shielded by the knee-length shirttails, he pulled on his baggy new pants. He tied the azarband, azarband, the waiststring, with a tight bow and turned toward Manzoor for inspection. the waiststring, with a tight bow and turned toward Manzoor for inspection.

"Bohot Kharab!" very horrible, Manzoor p.r.o.nounced. He lunged toward Mortenson, grabbed the very horrible, Manzoor p.r.o.nounced. He lunged toward Mortenson, grabbed the azarband, azarband, which hung outside the in-fidel's trousers, and tucked it inside the waistband. "It is forbidden to wear as such," Manzoor said. Mortenson felt the tripwires that surrounded him in Pakistani culture-the rigid codes of conduct he was bound to stumble into-and resolved to try to avoid further explosions of offense. which hung outside the in-fidel's trousers, and tucked it inside the waistband. "It is forbidden to wear as such," Manzoor said. Mortenson felt the tripwires that surrounded him in Pakistani culture-the rigid codes of conduct he was bound to stumble into-and resolved to try to avoid further explosions of offense.

Manzoor polished his gla.s.ses with his own shirttail, revealing his modestly tied trousers, and inspected Mortenson's outfit carefully. "Now you look 50 percent Pakistani," he said. "Shall you try again to pray?"

Manzoor shuttered his shop for the evening and led Mortenson outside. The tropical dusk was quickly tamping down the daylight, and with it, some of the heat. Mortenson walked arm in arm with the tailor, toward the tiled minaret of the GTS Mosque. On both sides of Kashmir Road men walked similarly in twos and threes past closed and closing shops. Since driving is frowned upon during evening prayer, traffic was unusually light.

Two blocks before the intimidating minaret of the GTS Mosque, which Mortenson a.s.sumed to be their destination, Manzoor led him into the wide, dusty lot of a CalTex gas station, where more than a hundred men were bent to wudu, wudu, the ritual washing required before prayer. Manzoor filled a the ritual washing required before prayer. Manzoor filled a lota, lota, or water jug, from a tap and instructed Mortenson in the strict order in which ablutions were to be performed. Imitating the tailor, Mortenson squatted and rolled up his pant legs and his sleeves, and began with the most unclean parts, splashing water over his left foot, then his right. He moved on to his left hand and was rinsing his right when Manzoor, bending over to refill the or water jug, from a tap and instructed Mortenson in the strict order in which ablutions were to be performed. Imitating the tailor, Mortenson squatted and rolled up his pant legs and his sleeves, and began with the most unclean parts, splashing water over his left foot, then his right. He moved on to his left hand and was rinsing his right when Manzoor, bending over to refill the lota lota before washing his face, farted distinctly. Sighing, the tailor knelt and began his ablutions again with his left foot. When Mortenson did the same, he corrected him. "No. Only for me. I am unclean," he explained. before washing his face, farted distinctly. Sighing, the tailor knelt and began his ablutions again with his left foot. When Mortenson did the same, he corrected him. "No. Only for me. I am unclean," he explained.

When his hands were again properly pure, the tailor pressed a finger to his left nostril then his right, blowing, and Mortenson again mirrored his actions. Around them, a cacophony of hawking and spitting accompanied half a dozen distant calls to prayer. Imitating Manzoor, Mortenson rinsed his ears, then carefully swished water throughout what Muslims consider humans' holiest feature, the mouth, from which prayers ascend directly to Allah's ears.

For years, Mortenson had known, intellectually, that the word "Muslim" means, literally, "to submit." And like many Americans, who worshipped at the temple of rugged individualism, he had found the idea dehumanizing. But for the first time, kneeling among one hundred strangers, watching them wash away not only impurities, but also, obviously, the aches and cares of their daily lives, he glimpsed the pleasure to be found in submission to a ritualized fellowship of prayer.

Someone switched off the station's generator, and attendants cloaked the gaudy gas pumps beneath modest sheets. Manzoor took a small white prayer cap from his pocket and crushed it flat so it would stay on Mortenson's large head. Joining a row of men, Mortenson and Manzoor knelt on mats the tailor provided. Mortenson knew that beyond the wall they faced, where an enormous purple and orange sign advertised the virtues of CalTex gasoline, lay Mecca. He couldn't help feeling that he was being asked to bow to the salesmanship and refining skills of Texas and Saudi oilmen, but he put his cynicism aside.

With Manzoor he knelt and crossed his arms to address Allah respectfully. The men around him weren't looking at the advertis.e.m.e.nt on the wall, he knew, they were looking inward. Nor were they regarding him. As he pressed his forehead against the still-warm ground, Greg Mortenson realized that, for the first moment during all his days in Pakistan, no one was looking at him as an outsider. No one was looking at him at all. Allah Akbhar, Allah Akbhar, he chanted quietly, G.o.d is great, adding his voice to the chorus in the darkened lot. The belief rippling around him was strong. It was powerful enough to convert a gas station into a holy place. Who knew what other wonders of transformation lay ahead? he chanted quietly, G.o.d is great, adding his voice to the chorus in the darkened lot. The belief rippling around him was strong. It was powerful enough to convert a gas station into a holy place. Who knew what other wonders of transformation lay ahead?

CHAPTER 7.

HARD W WAY H HOME.

This harsh and splendid land With snow-covered rock mountains, cold-crystal streams, Deep forests of cypress, juniper and ash Is as much my body as what you see before you here. I cannot be separated from this or from you. Our many hearts have only a single beat.

-from The Warrior Song of King Gezar The Warrior Song of King Gezar

Abdul's knock came well before dawn. Mortenson had been lying awake, on his string bed, for hours. Sleep had been no match for the fear of all that, this day, could go wrong. He rose and opened the door, trying to make sense of the sight of a one-eyed man holding out a pair of highly polished shoes for his inspection.

They were his tennis shoes. Abdul had clearly spent hours while Mortenson slept mending, scrubbing, and buffing his torn and faded Nikes, trying to transform them into something more respectable. Something a man setting out on a long and difficult journey might lace up with pride. Abdul had transformed himself for the occasion, too. His usually silvery beard was dyed deep orange from a fresh application of henna.

Mortenson took his tea, then washed with a bucket of cold water and the last bit of the Tibet Snow brand soap he'd been rationing all week. His handful of belongings only half-filled his old duffel bag. He let Abdul sling it over his shoulder, knowing the firestorm of offense he'd encounter if he tried to carry it himself, and bid his rooftop sweatbox a fond good-bye.

Conscious of his gleaming shoes, and seeing how much keeping up appearances pleased Abdul, Mortenson consented to hire a taxi for the trip to Rajah Bazaar. The black colonial-era Morris, flotsam abandoned in 'Pindi by the ebbing tide of British empire, purled quietly along still-sleeping streets.

Even in the faint light of the shuttered market square, they found their truck easily enough. Like most Bedfords in the country, little remained of the original 1940s vehicle that had once served as an army transport when Pakistan had been but a piece of British India. Most moving parts had been replaced half a dozen times by locally machined spares. The original olive paint, far too drab for this king of the Karakoram Highway, had been buried beneath a blizzard of decorative mirrors and metal lozenges. And every square inch of ungarnished surface area had been drowned out beneath an operatic application of "disco paint," at one of Rawalpindi's many Bedford workshops. Most of the brilliantly colored designs, in lime, gold, and lurid scarlet, were curlicues and arabesques consistent with Islam's prohibition against representative art. But a life-sized portrait of cricket hero Imran Khan on the tailgate, holding a bat aloft like a scepter, was a form of idol worship that provoked such acute national pride that few Pakistanis, even the most devout, could take offense.

Mortenson paid the taxi driver, then walked around the sleeping mammoth, searching for the truck's crew, anxious to begin the day's work. A sonorous rumbling led him to kneel underneath the truckbed, where three figures lay suspended in hammocks, two snoring in languid concert.

The hazzan hazzan woke them before Mortenson could, wailing out of a minaret on the far side of the square at a volume that made no allowance for the hour. While the crew groaned, hauled themselves out of the hammocks, spat extravagantly, and lit the first of many cigarettes, Mortenson knelt with Abdul and prepared to pray. It seemed to Mortenson that Abdul, like most Muslims, had an internal compa.s.s permanently calibrated toward Mecca. Though they faced the uninspiring prospect of their lumber yard's still-padlocked gates, Mortenson tried to look beyond his surroundings. With no water on hand, Abdul rolled up his pantlegs and sleeves and performed ritualized ablutions anyway, symbolically rubbing away impurities that couldn't be washed. Mortenson followed, then folded his arms and bent to morning prayer. Abdul glanced at him critically, then nodded with approval. "So," Mortenson said, "do I look like a Pakistani?" woke them before Mortenson could, wailing out of a minaret on the far side of the square at a volume that made no allowance for the hour. While the crew groaned, hauled themselves out of the hammocks, spat extravagantly, and lit the first of many cigarettes, Mortenson knelt with Abdul and prepared to pray. It seemed to Mortenson that Abdul, like most Muslims, had an internal compa.s.s permanently calibrated toward Mecca. Though they faced the uninspiring prospect of their lumber yard's still-padlocked gates, Mortenson tried to look beyond his surroundings. With no water on hand, Abdul rolled up his pantlegs and sleeves and performed ritualized ablutions anyway, symbolically rubbing away impurities that couldn't be washed. Mortenson followed, then folded his arms and bent to morning prayer. Abdul glanced at him critically, then nodded with approval. "So," Mortenson said, "do I look like a Pakistani?"

Abdul brushed the dirt from the American's forehead, where it had been pressed to the cool ground. "Not Pakistan man," he said. "But if you say Bosnia, I believe."

Ali, in another set of immaculate shalwar, shalwar, arrived to unlock the gate of his business. Mortenson arrived to unlock the gate of his business. Mortenson salaamed salaamed to him, then opened a small black student's notebook he'd bought in the bazaar and began jotting some calculations. When the Bedford was fully loaded with his purchases, more than two-thirds of his twelve thousand dollars would already be spent. That left him only three thousand to pay laborers, to hire jeeps to carry the school supplies up narrow tracks to Korphe, and for Mortenson to live on until the school was completed. to him, then opened a small black student's notebook he'd bought in the bazaar and began jotting some calculations. When the Bedford was fully loaded with his purchases, more than two-thirds of his twelve thousand dollars would already be spent. That left him only three thousand to pay laborers, to hire jeeps to carry the school supplies up narrow tracks to Korphe, and for Mortenson to live on until the school was completed.

Half a dozen members of Ali's extended family loaded the lumber first as the driver and his crew supervised. Mortenson counted the sheets of wood as they were wedged against the front of the truckbed, and confirmed they were in fact the reliable four-ply. He watched, contented, as a neat forest of two-by-fours grew on top of them.

By the time the sun illuminated the market, the temperature was already well over a hundred degrees. With a symphonic clanging, shopkeepers rolled up or folded back their businesses' metal gates. Pieces of the school threaded their way through the crowds toward the truck on porters' heads, carried by human-powered rickshaws, motorcycle jeepneys, donkey carts, and another Bedford delivering one hundred bags of cement.

It was hot work in the truckbed, but Abdul hovered over the crew, calling out the name of every item as it was stowed to Mortenson, who checked them off his list. Mortenson watched, with increasing satisfaction, as each of the forty-two different purchases he and Abdul had haggled for were neatly stowed, axes nestling against mason's trowels, tucked together by a phalanx of shovels.

By afternoon, a dense crowd had gathered around the Bedford as word spread that an enormous infidel in brown pajamas was loading a truck full of supplies for Muslim schoolchildren. Porters had to push through a ring five people thick to make their deliveries. Mortenson's size-fourteen feet drew a steady stream of bouncing eyebrows and bawdy jokes from onlookers. Spectators shouted guesses at Morten-son's nationality as he worked. Bosnia and Chechnya were deemed the most likely source of this large mangy-looking man. When Mortenson, with his rapidly improving Urdu, interrupted the speculation to tell them he was American, the crowd looked at his sweat-soaked and dirt-grimed shalwar, shalwar, at his smudged and oily skin, and several men told him they didn't think so. at his smudged and oily skin, and several men told him they didn't think so.

Two of the most precious items-a carpenter's level and a weighted plumb line-were missing. Mortenson was sure he'd seen them delivered but he couldn't find them in the rapidly filling truck. Abdul led the search with fervor, heaving bags of concrete aside until he found the spot where they'd slipped to the bottom. He rolled them inside a cloth and gravely instructed the driver to shelter the tools safely in the cab all the way to Skardu.

By evening, Mortenson had checked off all forty-two items on his list. The mountain of supplies had reached a height of twenty feet and the crew labored to make the load secure before dark, stretching burlap sacking over the top and tying it down tightly with a webwork of thick ropes.

As Mortenson climbed down to bid Abdul good-bye, the crowd pressed in on him, offering him cigarettes and handfuls of battered rupee notes for his school. The driver was impatient to leave and revved his engine, sending spouts of black diesel smoke out the truck's twin stacks. Despite the noise and frenzy, Abdul stood perfectly still at the center of the crowd, performing a dua, dua, a prayer for a safe journey. He closed his eye and drew his hands toward his face, fanning himself in Allah's spirit. He stroked his hennaed beard and chanted a fervent plea for Mortenson's wellbeing that was drowned by the blast of the Bed-ford's horn. a prayer for a safe journey. He closed his eye and drew his hands toward his face, fanning himself in Allah's spirit. He stroked his hennaed beard and chanted a fervent plea for Mortenson's wellbeing that was drowned by the blast of the Bed-ford's horn.

Abdul opened his eye and took Mortenson's large dirty hand in both of his. He looked his friend over, noting the shoes he'd polished the evening before were already blackened with grime, as was the freshly tailored shalwar shalwar. "I think not a Bosnian, Greg Sahib," he said, pounding Mortenson on the back. "Nowadays, you are the same as a Pakistan man."

Mortenson climbed on top of the truck and nodded to Abdul standing alone and exhausted at the edge of the crowd. The driver put the truck in gear. Allah Akbhar! Allah Akbhar! the crowd shouted as one, the crowd shouted as one, Allah Akbhar! Allah Akbhar! Mortenson held his arms aloft in victory and waved farewell until the small flame of his friend's hennaed beard was extinguished by the surging crowd. Mortenson held his arms aloft in victory and waved farewell until the small flame of his friend's hennaed beard was extinguished by the surging crowd.

Roaring west out of Rawalpindi, Mortenson rode on top of the Bedford. The driver, Mohammed, had urged him to sit in the smoky cab, but Mortenson was determined to savor this moment in style. The artists at the Bedford shop in 'Pindi had welded a jaunty extension to the truckbed, which hung over the cab like a hat worn at a rakish angle. On top of this hat brim hovering over the rattling cab, straddling supplies, Mortenson made a comfortable nest on burlap and bales of hay that swayed high over the highway their speed swallowed. For company he had crates of snowy white chickens Mohammed had brought to sell in the mountains, and untamed Punjabi pop music that shrilled out of the Bedford's open windows.

Leaving the dense markets of Rawalpindi, the dry, brown countryside opened, took on a flush of green, and the foothills of the Himalaya beckoned from beyond the late-day heat haze. Smaller vehicles made way for the ma.s.sive truck, swerving onto the verge with every blast from the Bedford's air horns, then cheering when they saw the portrait of Imran Khan and his cricket bat pa.s.sing them boldly by.

Mortenson's own mood felt as serene as the peaceful tobacco fields they sailed past, shimmering greenly like a wind-tossed tropical sea. After a hot week of haggling and fretting over every rupee, he felt he could finally relax. "It was cool and windy on top of the truck," Mortenson remembers. "And I hadn't been cool since I arrived in Rawalpindi. I felt like a king, riding high on my throne. And I felt I'd already succeeded. I was sitting on top of my school. I'd bought everything we needed and stuck to my budget. Not even Jean h.o.e.rni could find fault with anything I'd done. And in a few weeks, I thought, the school would be built, and I could head home and figure out what to do with the rest of my life. I don't know if I've ever felt so satisfied."

Mohammed hit the brakes heavily then, pulling off the road, and Mortenson had to clutch at the chicken crates to avoid being thrown down onto the hood. He leaned over the side and asked, in Urdu, why they were stopping. Mohammed pointed to a modest white minaret at the edge of a tobacco field, and the men streaming toward it. In the silence after the Punjabi pop had been hastily m.u.f.fled, Mortenson heard the call of the hazzan hazzan carried clearly on the wind. He hadn't known that the driver, who'd seemed so anxious to be on his way, was devout enough to stop for evening prayer. But there was much in this part of the world, he realized, that he barely understood. At least there would be plenty of opportunity, he told himself, searching for a foothold on the pa.s.senger door, to practice his praying. carried clearly on the wind. He hadn't known that the driver, who'd seemed so anxious to be on his way, was devout enough to stop for evening prayer. But there was much in this part of the world, he realized, that he barely understood. At least there would be plenty of opportunity, he told himself, searching for a foothold on the pa.s.senger door, to practice his praying.

After dark, fortified with strong green tea and three plates of dhal chana, dhal chana, a curry of yellow lentils, from a roadside stand, Mortenson lay back in his nest on top of the truck and watched individual stars pinp.r.i.c.k the fabric of twilight. a curry of yellow lentils, from a roadside stand, Mortenson lay back in his nest on top of the truck and watched individual stars pinp.r.i.c.k the fabric of twilight.

Thirty kilometers west of Rawalpindi, at Taxila, they turned north off Pakistan's princ.i.p.al thoroughfare toward the mountains. Taxila may have been a hub where Buddhism and Islam collided hundreds of years ago, before battling for supremacy. But for Mortenson's swaying school on wheels, the collision of tectonic plates that had occurred in this zone millions of years earlier was more to the point.

Here the plains met the mountains, this strand of the old Silk Road turned steep, and the going got unpredictable. Isabella Bird, an intrepid species of female explorer who could only have been produced by Victorian England, doc.u.mented the difficulty of traveling from the plains of the Indian subcontinent into Baltistan, or "Little Tibet" as she referred to it, during her 1876 journey. "The traveler who aspires to reach the highlands cannot be borne along in a carriage or a hill cart," she wrote. "For much of the way he is limited to a foot pace and if he has regard to his horse he walks down all rugged and steep descents, which are many. 'Roads,' " she wrote, adding sarcastic quotation marks, "are constructed with great toil and expense, as nature compels the road-maker to follow her lead, and carry his track along the narrow valleys, ravines, gorges, and chasms which she has marked out for him. For miles at a time this 'road'...is merely a ledge above a raging torrent. When two caravans meet, the animals of one must give way and scramble up the mountain-side, where foothold is often perilous. In pa.s.sing a caravan...my servant's horse was pushed over the precipice by a loaded mule and drowned."

The Karakoram Highway (KKH), the road their Bedford rumbled up with a bullish snorting from its twin exhausts, was a costly improvement over the type of tracks Bird's party traveled. Begun in 1958 by a newly independent Pakistan anxious to forge a transportation link with China, its ally against India, and in a perpetual state of construction ever since, the KKH is one of the most daunting engineering projects humans have ever attempted. Hewing princ.i.p.ally to the rugged Indus River Gorge, the KKH has cost the life of one road worker for each of its four hundred kilometers. The "highway" was so impa.s.sable that Pakistani engineers were forced to take apart bulldozers, pack their components in on mules, and rea.s.semble them before heavy work could begin. The Pakistani military tried flying in bulldozers on a Russian MI-17 heavy-lifting helicopter, but the inaugural flight, trying to maneuver through the high winds and narrow gorge, clipped a cliff and crashed into the Indus, killing all nine aboard.

In 1968, the Chinese, anxious to create an easy route to a new market for their manufactured goods, to limit Soviet influence in Central Asia, and to cement a strategic alliance against India, offered to supervise and fund the completion of the thirteen-hundred-kilometer route from Kashgar, in southwestern China, to Islamabad. And after more than a decade of deploying an army of road workers, the newly christened "Friendship Highway" was declared complete in 1978, sticking its thumb squarely in India's eye.

As they climbed, the air carried the first bite of winter and Mortenson wrapped a wool blanket around his shoulders and head. For the first time, he wondered whether he'd be able to complete the school before cold weather set in, but he banished the thought, propped his head against a bale of hay, and lulled by the slowly rocking truck, slept.

A rooster in a cage five feet from his head woke Mortenson without mercy at first light. He was stiff and cold and badly in need of a bathroom break. He leaned over the side of the truck to request a stop and saw the top of the bearish a.s.sistant's close-cropped head stretching out the window, and beyond it, straight down fifteen hundred feet to the bottom of a rocky gorge, where a coffee-colored river foamed over boulders. He looked up and saw they were hemmed in hard by granite walls that rose ten thousand feet on both sides of the river. The Bedford was climbing a steep hill, and slipped backward near its crest, as Mohammed fumbled with the shift, manhandling it until it clanked into first gear. Mortenson, leaning out over the pa.s.senger side of the cab, could see the truck's rear tires rolling a foot from the edge of the gorge, spitting stones out into the abyss as Mohammed gunned the engine. Whenever the tires strayed too near to the edge, the a.s.sistant whistled sharply and the truck swung left.

Mortenson rolled back on top of the cab, not wanting to interfere with Mohammed's concentration. When he'd come to climb K2, he'd been too preoccupied by his goal to pay much attention to his bus trip up the Indus. And on his way home, he'd been consumed with his plans to raise money for the school. But seeing this wild country again, and watching the Bedford struggling over this "highway" at fifteen miles an hour, he had a renewed appreciation for just how thoroughly these mountains and gorges cut Baltistan off from the world.

Where the gorge widened enough to permit a small village to cling to its edge, they stopped for a breakfast of chapattis and and dudh patti, dudh patti, black tea sweetened with milk and sugar. Afterward Mohammed insisted, more emphatically than the night before, that Mortenson join them inside the cab, and he reluctantly agreed. black tea sweetened with milk and sugar. Afterward Mohammed insisted, more emphatically than the night before, that Mortenson join them inside the cab, and he reluctantly agreed.

He took his place between Mohammed and the two a.s.sistants. Mohammed, as slight as the Bedford was enormous, could barely reach the pedals. The bearish a.s.sistant smoked bowl after bowl of hashish, which he blew in the face of the other a.s.sistant, a slight boy still struggling to grow his mustache.

Like the exterior, the inside of the Bedford was wildly decorated, with twinkling red lights, Kashmiri woodcarving, 3D photos of beloved Bollywood stars, dozens of shiny silver bells, and a bouquet of plastic flowers that poked Mortenson in the face whenever Mohammed braked too enthusiastically. "I felt like I was riding in a rolling brothel," Mortenson says. "Not that we were rolling all that much. It was more like watching an inchworm make progress."

On the steepest sections of the highway, the a.s.sistants would jump out and throw large stones behind the rear wheels. After the Bedford lurched forward a few feet, they'd collect the rocks and throw them under the tires again, repeating the Sisyphian process endlessly until the road flattened out. Occasionally a private jeep would pa.s.s them on the uphills, or an oncoming bus would rumble by, its female pa.s.sengers mummified against road dust and prying male eyes. But mostly, they rolled on alone.

The sun disappeared early behind the steep valley walls and by late afternoon it was night-dark at the base of the ravine. Rounding a blind curve, Mohammed stood on the brakes and narrowly missed ramming the rear of a pa.s.senger bus. On the road ahead of the bus, hundreds of vehicles-jeeps, buses, Bedfords-were backed up before the entrance to a concrete bridge. With Mohammed, Mortenson climbed out to have a look.

As they approached the bridge, it was clear they weren't being delayed by the KKH's legendary propensity for rockfall or avalanche. Two dozen untamed-looking bearded men in black turbans stood guarding the bridge. Their rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs were trained lazily in the direction of a smart company of Pakistani soldiers whose own weapons were judiciously holstered. "No good," Mohammed said quietly, exhausting most of his English vocabulary.

One of the turbaned men lowered his rocket launcher and waved Mortenson toward him. Filthy from two days on the road, with a wool blanket wrapped over his head, Mortenson felt sure he didn't look like a foreigner.

"You come from?" the man asked in English, "America?" He held a propane lantern up and studied Mortenson's face. In the lamplight, Mortenson saw the man's eyes were fiercely blue, and rimmed with surma, surma, the black pigment worn by the most devout, some would say fanatical, graduates of the fundamentalist the black pigment worn by the most devout, some would say fanatical, graduates of the fundamentalist madra.s.sas madra.s.sas. The men who were pouring over the western border this year, 1994, as foot soldiers of the force about to take control of Afghanistan, the Taliban.

"Yes, America," Mortenson said, warily.

"America number one," his interrogator said, laying down the rocket launcher and lighting a local Tander brand cigarette, which he offered to Mortenson. Mortenson didn't exactly smoke, but decided the time was right to puff appreciatively. With apologies, never meeting the man's eyes, Mohammed led Mortenson gently away by the elbow, and back to the Bedford.

As he brewed tea over a small fire by the tailgate of the truck, under Imran Khan's watchful eyes, and prepared to settle in for the night, Mohammed tapped into the rumor mill circulating among the hundreds of other stranded travelers. These men had blocked the bridge all day, and a squad of soldiers had been trucked up thirty-five kilometers from a military base at Pattan to see that it was reopened.

Between Mortenson's spotty Urdu and a number of conflicting accounts, he wasn't able to be sure he had the details properly sorted. But he understood that this was the village of Dasu, in the Kohistan region, the wildest part of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. Kohistan was infamous for banditry and had never been more than nominally under control of Islamabad. In the years following 9/11 and America's war to topple the Taliban, these remote and craggy valleys would attract bands of Taliban and their Al Qaeda benefactors, who knew how easy it could be to lose oneself in these wild heights.

The gunmen guarding the bridge lived up a valley nearby and claimed that a contractor from the government in distant lowland Islamabad arrived with millions of rupees earmarked to widen their game trails into logging roads, so these men could sell their timber. But they said the contractor stole the money and left without improving their roads. They were blocking the Karakoram Highway until he was returned to them so they could hang him to death from this bridge.

After tea and a packet of crackers that Mortenson shared out, they decided to sleep. Despite Mohammed's warning that it was safer to spend the night in the cab, Mortenson climbed to his nest on top of the truck. From his perch by the sleeping chickens, he could see the fierce, s.h.a.ggy Pashto-speaking Kohistanis on the bridge, illuminated by lanterns. The lowland Pakistanis who had come to negotiate with them spoke Urdu, and looked like a different species, girlishly trim, with neat blue berets and ammunition belts cinched tightly about their tiny waists. Not for the first time, Mortenson wondered if Pakistan wasn't more of an idea than a country.

He lay his head on a hay bale for a moment, sure he wouldn't be able to grasp any sleep this night, and awoke, in full daylight, to gunfire. Mortenson sat up and saw first the pink, inscrutable eyes of the white chickens regarding him blankly, then the Kohistanis standing on the bridge, firing their Kalashnikovs in the air.

Mortenson felt the Bedford roar to life, and saw black smoke belch out of the twin stacks. He leaned down into the driver's window. "Good!" Mohammed said, smiling up at him, revving the engine. "Shooting for happy, Inshallah! Inshallah!" He jammed the stick into gear.

Pouring out of doorways and alleys in the village, Mortenson saw, were groups of veiled women scurrying back to their vehicles, from the spots where they'd chosen to sequester themselves through the long night of waiting.

Pa.s.sing over the Dasu bridge, in a long, dusty line of crawling vehicles, Mortenson saw the Kohistani who had offered him a cigarette and his colleagues pumping their fists in the air and firing their automatic weapons wildly. Never, not even on an army firing range, had Mortenson experienced such intense gunfire. He didn't see any lowland contractor swinging from the bridge's girders and a.s.sumed the gunmen had extracted a promise of reparations from the soldiers.

As they climbed, the walls of the gorge rose until they blotted out all but a narrow strip of sky, white with heat haze. They were skirting the western flank of Nanga Parbat, at 26,658 feet the earth's ninth-loftiest peak, which anchors the western edge of the Himalaya. But the "Naked Mountain" was cloaked to Mortenson by the depths of the Indus Gorge. With a mountain climber's fixation, he felt it looming irresistibly to the east. For proof, he studied the surface of the Indus. Streams carrying melt.w.a.ter from Nanga Parbat's glaciers boiled down ravines and over lichen-covered boulders into the Indus. They stippled the silty, mud-white surface of the river with pools of alpine blue.

Just before Gilgit, the most populous city in Pakistan's Northern Areas, they left the Karakoram Highway before it began its long switchback toward China over the world's highest paved road, the Khunjerab Pa.s.s, which crests at 15,520 feet, and instead followed the Indus east toward Skardu. Despite the growing chill in the air, Mortenson felt warmed by familiar fires. This riverine corridor carved between twenty-thousand-foot peaks so numerous as to be nameless was the entrance to his Baltistan. Though this lunar rockscape in the western Karakoram has to be one of the most forbidding on Earth, Mortenson felt he had come home. The dusty murk along the depths of the gorge and the high-alt.i.tude sun brushing the tips of these granite towers felt more like his natural habitat than the pastel stucco bungalows of Berkeley. His whole interlude in America, the increasing awkwardness with Marina, his struggle to raise money for the school, his insomniacal shifts at the hospital, felt as insubstantial as a fading dream. These juts and crags held him.

Two decades earlier, an Irish nurse named Dervla Murphy felt the same tug to these mountains. Traveling in the intrepid spirit of Isabella Bird, and ignoring the sage advice of seasoned adventurers who told her Baltistan was impa.s.sable in snow, Murphy crisscrossed the Karakoram in deep winter, on horseback, with her five-year-old daughter.

In her book about the journey, Where the Indus Is Young, Where the Indus Is Young, the normally eloquent Murphy is so overcome attempting to describe her journey through this gorge that she struggles to spit out a description. the normally eloquent Murphy is so overcome attempting to describe her journey through this gorge that she struggles to spit out a description.

"None of the adjectives usually applied to mountain scenery is adequate here-indeed, the very word 'scenery' is comically inappropriate. 'Splendour' or 'grandeur' are useless to give a feeling of this tremendous ravine that twists narrow and dark and bleak and deep for mile after mile after mile, with never a single blade of gra.s.s, or weed, or tiny bush to remind one that the vegetable kingdom exists. Only the jade-green Indus-sometimes tumbling into a dazzle of white foam- relieves the gray-brown of crags and sheer precipices and steep slopes."

When Murphy plodded along the south bank of the Indus on horseback, she meditated on the horror of traversing this glorified goat path in a motor vehicle. A driver here must embrace fatalism, she writes, otherwise he "could never summon up enough courage to drive an overloaded, badly balanced, and mechanically imperfect jeep along track where for hours on end one minor misjudgement could send the vehicle hurtling hundreds of feet into the Indus. As the river has found the only possible way through this ferociously formidable knot of mountains, there is no alternative but to follow it. Without traveling through the Indus Gorge, one cannot conceive of its drama. The only sane way to cover such ground is on foot."

On top of the overloaded, badly balanced, but mechanically sound Bedford, Mortenson swayed with the twenty-foot pile of school supplies, yawning irremediably close to the ravine's edge every time the truck shimmied over a mound of loose rockfall. Hundreds of feet below, a sh.e.l.l of a shattered bus rusted in peace. With the regularity of mile markers, white shahid, shahid, or "martyr" monuments honored the death of Frontier Works Organization roadbuilders who had perished in their battles with these rock walls. Thanks to thousands of Pakistani soldiers the road to Skardu had been "improved" sufficiently since Murphy's day to allow trucks to pa.s.s on their way to support the war effort against India. But rockfall and avalanche, the weathered tarmac crumbling unpredictably into the abyss, and insufficient s.p.a.ce for oncoming traffic meant that dozens of vehicles plummeted off the road each year. or "martyr" monuments honored the death of Frontier Works Organization roadbuilders who had perished in their battles with these rock walls. Thanks to thousands of Pakistani soldiers the road to Skardu had been "improved" sufficiently since Murphy's day to allow trucks to pa.s.s on their way to support the war effort against India. But rockfall and avalanche, the weathered tarmac crumbling unpredictably into the abyss, and insufficient s.p.a.ce for oncoming traffic meant that dozens of vehicles plummeted off the road each year.

A decade later, in the post-9/11 era, Mortenson would often be asked by Americans about the danger he faced in the region from terrorists. "If I die in Pakistan, it'll be because of a traffic accident, not a bomb or bullet," he'd always tell them. "The real danger over there is on the road."

He felt the opening in the quality of the light before he noticed where he was. Grinding down a long descent in late afternoon, the air brightened. The claustrophobic ravine walls widened then folded out into the distance, rising into a ring of snow-capped giants that surrounded the Skardu Valley. By the time Mohammed accelerated onto flatland at the bottom of the pa.s.s, the Indus had unclenched its muscles and relaxed to a muddy, meandering lakelike width. Along the valley floor, tawny sand dunes baked in the late sun. And if you didn't look up at the painfully white snow peaks that burned above the sand, Mortenson thought, this could almost be the Arabian Peninsula.

The outskirts of Skardu, awash in pharing pharing and and starga, starga, apricot and walnut orchards, announced that the odyssey along the Indus was over. Mortenson, riding his school into Skardu, waved at men wearing the distinctive white woolen Balti apricot and walnut orchards, announced that the odyssey along the Indus was over. Mortenson, riding his school into Skardu, waved at men wearing the distinctive white woolen Balti topis topis on their heads, at work harvesting the fruit, and they waved back, grinning. Children ran alongside the Bedford, shouting their approval at Imran Khan and the foreigner riding atop his image. Here was the triumphal return he'd been imagining ever since he sat down to write the first of the 580 letters. Right now, right around the next curve, Mortenson felt certain, his happy ending was about to begin. on their heads, at work harvesting the fruit, and they waved back, grinning. Children ran alongside the Bedford, shouting their approval at Imran Khan and the foreigner riding atop his image. Here was the triumphal return he'd been imagining ever since he sat down to write the first of the 580 letters. Right now, right around the next curve, Mortenson felt certain, his happy ending was about to begin.

CHAPTER 8.