Book Review: Three Cups of Tea

Bashir pause to watch a live CNN feed from Baghdad. Staring at a small video window inset into the flight manifests scrolling down his monitor, Bashir was struck silent by the images of wailing Iraqi women carrying children’s bodies out of the rubble of a bombed building.
As he studied the screen, Bashir’s bullish shoulders slumped. “People like me are America’s best friends in the region,” Bashir said at last, shaking his head ruefully. “I’m a moderate Muslim, an educated man. But watching this, even I could become a jihadi. How can Americans say they are making themselves safer?” Bashir asked, struggling not to direct his anger toward the large American target on the other side of his desk. “Your President Bush has done a wonderful job of uniting one billion Muslims against America for the next tow hundred years.”
“Osama had something to do with it, too,” Mortenson said.
“Osama, baah!” Bashir roared. “Osama is not a product of Pakistan or Afghanistan. He is a creation of America. Thanks to America, Osama is in every home. As a military man, I know you can never fight and win against someone who can shoot at you once and then run off and hide while you have to remain eternally on guard. You have to attack the source of your enemy’s strength. In America’s case, that’s not Osama or Saddam or anyone else. The enemy is ignorance. The only way to defeat it is to build relationships with these people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business. Otherwise the fight will go on forever.”

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I first learned of Three Cups of Tea when I found this excerpt on my friend Ali's facebook, followed by the qualifying note: If you haven't read (this book), stop your life now, and READ IT. Please.

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Three Cups of Tea recounts the many adventures of Ted Mortenson, a Minnesotan Lutheran of whom Garrison Keillor would be all too proud. While the story dances in chronological fluidity from Tanzania to Minnesota to San Francisco/Berkley to Pakistan to Montana, the bulk of the story takes place in the Himalayan protected (and cut-off) villages of Pakistan. It is here that Mortenson, an avid mountaineer, attempts the super human feat of summiting K2, one of the world's tallest and most dangerous mountains.

Upon his descent of K2, Mortenson's entire life takes a new path. He winds up in the wrong village bewildered and exhausted, only to be welcomed with open arms by an entire village. In his attempt to thank the hospitable Baltian villagers, Mortenson distributes much of his climbing gear, and makes a promise just before he leaves. I will return to build you a school.

In the Baltian village's isolation, the children were deprived of even basic education. If a boy showed particular promise and came from a less-poor family, he may have been lucky enough to be sent away from the village to study at a young age. Girls however, had no chance of an education.

As the story develops, the reader becomes a witness to the transformational power of Mortenson's determination. What begins with his promise to the Baltian village of Korphe becomes the Central Asian Institute and schools in the most rural villages of Pakistan and Afghani refugee camps.

While the US unleashes "Shock and Awe," Greg Mortenson is receiving donations from Mujahadeen, employing a former Taliban militant, defeating fatwas proclaimed by a corrupt mullah, networking with members of the Pakistani military, and educating girls and boys in the same villages where Saudi money is funding fundamental Wahabi-Islam in the Taliban run madrassas. While the Pentagon is hemhorraging money in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mortenson and the CAI are building schools for $12,000, which are then staffed by CAI salaried teachers for the price of $8,000 for a generation. When Mortenson finds himself interrogated by US intelligence officers, besides being inanely asked if he knows where bin Laden is, he is asked how many students he is responsible for educating at that moment. Mortenson answers, "150,00 to 200,000 children."

I highly, highly recommend that all of you read this book. It is extremely well written, but more importantly it is extremely necessary for voting and future voting Americans to seriously reconsider the US' present methods of foreign diplomacy and fighting terror, or as Bahir would have you think, ignorance.

READ IT. Please.