Stones Into Schools Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Introduction

  PART I - The Promise

  Prologue

  CHAPTER 1 - The People at the End of the Road

  CHAPTER 2 - The Man with the Broken Hand

  CHAPTER 3 - The Year Zero

  CHAPTER 4 - The Sound of Peace

  CHAPTER 5 - Style Is Everything

  CHAPTER 6 - The Seal of the Kirghiz Khan

  PART II - Qayamat (“The Apocalypse”)

  CHAPTER 7 - A Dark and Distant Roar

  CHAPTER 8 - No Idea What to Do

  CHAPTER 9 - Farzana’s Desks

  CHAPTER 10 - Sarfraz’s Promise

  CHAPTER 11 - The Chance That Must Be Taken

  PART III - The School on the Roof of the World

  CHAPTER 12 - An E-mail from the American Colonel

  CHAPTER 13 - The Man from the Jalozai Refugee Camp

  CHAPTER 14 - Barnstorming Through Badakshan

  CHAPTER 15 - A Meeting of Two Warriors

  CHAPTER 16 - The Point of Return

  CHAPTER 17 - The Last Best School

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary

  Investing in Girls’ Education Yields Huge Returns

  Key Ingredients in Successfully Building Girls’ Schools

  Take Action

  Index

  ALSO BY GREG MORTENSON

  Three Cups of Tea

  ONE MAN’S MISSION TO PROMOTE PEACE . . . ONE SCHOOL AT A TIME

  (WITH DAVID OLIVER RELIN)

  Three Cups of Tea

  ONE MAN’S JOURNEY TO CHANGE THE WORLD . . . ONE CHILD AT A TIME

  (THE YOUNG READERS EDITION, WITH DAVID OLIVER RELIN,

  ADAPTED BY SARAH THOMSON)

  Listen to the Wind

  THE STORY OF DR. GREG AND THREE CUPS OF TEA

  (WITH SUSAN L. ROTH, ILLUSTRATIONS BY SUSAN L. ROTH)

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2009 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Greg Mortenson, 2009

  Foreword copyright © Khaled Hosseini, 2009

  All rights reserved

  Portions of this book originally appeared in slightly different form as “No Bachcheh Left Behind”

  by Kevin Fedarko, Outside magazine. Copyright © Kevin Fedarko, 2008.

  Map illustrations by Jim McMahon (pages viii-xi) and Jeffrey L. Ward (pages xii-xiii)

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Mortenson, Greg.

  Stones into schools : promoting peace with books, not bombs, in Afghanistan and

  Pakistan / Greg Mortenson.

  p. cm.

  Includes index.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-15196-9

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written

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  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means

  without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase

  only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of

  copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To the noble people of Afghanistan and Pakistan

  and to the 120 million school-age children in the world

  who are deprived of their right of education

  AFGHANISTAN PROVINCES & FEDERALLY ADMINISTERED TRIBAL AREAS

  ETHNIC DISTRIBUTION WITHIN PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN

  Who’s Who

  Ali, Haji: Greg Mortenson’s first mentor and chief of Korphe village, Pakistan; passed away in 2001

  Ali, Jahan: Granddaughter of Haji Ali and Central Asia Institute’s first female student to graduate from high school

  Ali, Niaz: Spiritual leader of the Kirghiz in the Wakhan, Afghanistan

  Ali, Twaha: Haji Ali’s son and father of Jahan; from Korphe, Pakistan

  Al-Zawahiri, Ayman: Egyptian physician; second in command of Al Qaeda

  Baig, Faisal: Wakhi elder from Charpurson Valley, Pakistan, and the CAI’s security manager

  Baig, Nasreen: CAI student from Charpurson Valley who is now studying to be a maternal health-care worker

  Baig, Saidullah: The CAI’s manager in Charpurson Valley, Pakistan

  bin Laden, Osama: Saudi Arabian leader of Al Qaeda who is now either in hiding or dead

  Bishop, Tara: Greg Mortenson’s wife and a psychotherapist

  Boi, Tashi: Village chief of Sarhad, in the Wakhan Corridor, Afghanistan

  Chabot, Doug: Climber, avalanche expert, and CAI volunteer

  Chabot, Genevieve: CAI scholarship program manager; married to Doug Chabot

  Chaudry, Shaukat Ali: Former Taliban member, now a teacher in the CAI girls’ school in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan

  Dostum, General Rashid: Uzbek ethnic leader based in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan

  Ghani, Dr. Ashraf: Former minister of education of Afghanistan

  Gulmarjan: CAI Afghan student killed by a land mine in 2003 at the age of twelve

  Hoerni, Dr. Jean: Silicon transistor pioneer and cofounder of CAI with Greg Mortenson; passed away in 1997

  Hosseini, Khaled: Physician, philanthropist, and best-selling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns

  Hussain, Aziza: First maternal health-care worker in Charpurson Valley, Pakistan

  Ibrahim, Haji Mohammed: Shura (elder) leader from Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan

  Karimi, Wakil: CAI manager for Afghanistan

  Karzai, Hamid: President of Afghanistan

  Khan, Abdul Rashid: Amir (leader) of the Kirghiz people in the Wakhan Corridor, Afghanistan

  Khan, Sadhar: Tajik leader in Badakshan who was CAI’s first supporter in the region

  Khan, Sarfraz: CAI’s remote areas project manager; from Pakistan

  Khan, Shah Ismael: Pir (leader) of the Wakhi people in Afghanistan

  Khan, Wohid: Badakshan border security commander in Afghanistan

  Kolenda, Colonel Christopher: Former commander of Forward Operating Base (FOB) Naray and currently a key U.S. military strategist in Afghanistan

  Kosar, Parveen: The first
female high school graduate in the Wakhan, and now a maternal health-care worker there

  Leitinger, Christiane: Director of Pennies for Peace

  McChrystal, Major General Stanley: Commander of ISAF (and U.S.) military forces in Afghanistan; proponent of counterinsurgency methodology

  Massoud, Ahmed Shah: Tajik military commander called the Lion of the Panjshir for his role in driving out the Soviets; assassinated by al Qaeda on September 9, 2001

  Minhas, Suleman: CAI’s Punjab Province manager, based in Islamabad; formerly a taxi driver

  Mirza, Colonel Ilyas: Retired Pakistani military aviation officer and general manager of Askari Aviation, a civil aviation charter company

  Mohammed, Mullah: Former Taliban bookkeeper and CAI accountant for the entire Wakhan region

  Mortenson, Amira and Khyber: Children of Greg Mortenson and Tara Bishop

  Mortenson, Christa: Younger sister of Greg Mortenson; passed away in 1992 when she was twenty-three

  Mortenson, Irvin “Dempsey” and Jerene: Greg Mortenson’s parents

  Mughal, Ghosia: CAI student from Azad Kashmir

  Mullen, Admiral Mike: Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military leader who inaugurated a CAI girls’ school in Afghanistan in July 2009. Married to Deborah.

  Musharraf, Pervez: President of Pakistan from 1999 to 2008; former Pakistani army chief of staff

  Myatt, Major General Mike: Former commander of the Marine Expeditionary Force who led the invasion into Kuwait

  Najibullah, Mohammed: Afghanistan’s communist leader and former president; killed by the Taliban in 1996

  Nicholson, Major Jason: U.S. military officer based at the Pentagon

  Olson, Admiral Eric: SOCOM commander of the combined U.S. Special Forces. Admiral Olson and his wife Marilyn are advocates of girls’ education and introduced Mortenson to several senior military commanders

  Omar, Mullah: Afghan Pashtun tribal leader of the Taliban; thought to be hiding in Quetta, Pakistan

  Parvi, Haji Ghulam: CAI’s Pakistan-based manager and accountant, who has overseen the establishment of over fifty schools

  Petraeus, General David: U.S. CENTCOM commander. It was from his wife, Holly, that General Petraeus first learned about Three Cups of Tea.

  Rahman, Abdullah: Former medical librarian and CAI driver in Afghanistan

  Razak, Abdul: Former expedition cook from Baltistan; eldest CAI employee; also known as Apo (old man)

  Sen, Amartya: 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize in economics

  Shabir, Saida: Headmistress of Gundi Piran girls’ school in Pattika, Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, which was destroyed by the 2005 earthquake

  Shah, Zahir: King of Afghanistan who fled to Italy in 1973 and returned to Afghanistan after 9/11, remaining there until his death in 2007

  Shaheen, Farzana: CAI student in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan

  Sipes, Jennifer: CAI’s operations manager in Montana

  Foreword

  by KHALED HOSSEINI

  The muddled war in Afghanistan is now in its eighth year, and has become the most urgent foreign policy challenge facing President Obama. Against a backdrop of rising conflict, respected think tanks like the Atlantic Council have published reports calling Afghanistan a failing state. The country indeed faces enormous problems: a violent, spiraling insurgency that is hampering the rule of law and developmental efforts, the growth of record crops of poppies, extreme poverty, criminality, homelessness, joblessness, lack of access to clean water, continuing problems with the status of women, and a central government that has struggled to protect its people and provide basic services.

  But there are success stories as well in post-9/11 Afghanistan, and the most meaningful of them is education. If we accept the premise that education is the key to achieving positive, long-lasting change in Afghanistan, then it is impossible to overstate how encouraging it is that this year nearly eight and a half million children will attend school in Afghanistan, with girls accounting for nearly 40 percent of enrollment.

  No one understands this better than Greg Mortenson, the founder of 131 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan that provide education to nearly 58,000 students. No one grasps better the profound impact and ripple effect of even one child’s education. And, arguably, no single individual or organization has done more to advance the American cause in Afghanistan than Greg Mortenson, a courteous, soft-spoken man who with his genial smile and warm handshake has shown the U.S. military how the so-called battle for the hearts and minds is fought. And how it is won.

  Greg’s philosophy is not complicated. He believes quite sincerely that the conflict in Afghanistan will ultimately not be won with guns and air strikes, but with books, notebooks, and pencils, the tools of socioeconomic well-being. To deprive Afghan children of education, he tells us, is to bankrupt the future of the country, and doom any prospects of Afghanistan becoming someday a more prosperous and productive state. Despite fatwas issued against him, despite threats from the Taliban and other extremists, he has done everything he can to make sure that this does not happen.

  Very crucially, he has spearheaded efforts to educate girls and young women. Not an easy task in a region where parents routinely keep their daughters out of school and where long-standing cultural traditions have deprived women of the right to education. But in village after village, Greg has reached out to religious leaders and elders to help convince parents to send their girls to school. This is because Greg believes, as I do, that if Afghanistan has any chance to become a more prosperous nation, it will require the full engagement of its women as part of the process. And for that to happen, women have to be given access to schools, and their education has to be one of the corner-stones of national reconstruction and development. As he says repeatedly, mantralike, “If you educate a boy, you educate an individual, but if you educate a girl, you educate a community.”

  Lastly, Greg has done all this with charm, grace, patience, and unfailing humility. He has listened carefully, built relationships with village leaders based on trust and respect, and involved people in shaping their own future. He has taken the time to learn the local culture—courtesy, hospitality, respect for elders—and to understand and appreciate the role Islam plays in people’s daily lives. No wonder the U.S. military has recruited Greg as a consultant on how to fashion better relationships with tribal leaders and village elders. They have a lot to learn from him. We all do.

  Tashakor, Greg jan, for all you do.

  KHALED HOSSEINI

  www.khaledhosseinifoundation.org

  Author of the international best sellers

  The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns

  Introduction

  Every leaf of the tree becomes a page of the Book

  Once the heart is opened and it has learnt to read

  —SAADI OF SHIRAZ

  Nasreen at home in Zuudkhan village, Pakistan

  In September of 2008, a woman with piercing green eyes named Nasreen Baig embarked on an arduous journey from her home in the tiny Pakistani village of Zuudkhan south along the Indus River and down the precipitous Karakoram Highway to the bustling city of Rawalpindi. The three-day trip—first on foot, then on horseback, and later by jeep and bus—took Nasreen, her husband, and their three small children from the sparsely populated Charpurson Valley, in the extreme northern part of Pakistan, directly into the heart of the Punjab, home to more than eighty-five million people. With the exception of a few farming tools, most of their worldly possessions, including a Koran, were crammed into a black suitcase that was cinched together with baling twine. They also carried a bulging burlap sack whose contents—every stitch of spare clothing they weren’t wearing on their backs—were as jumbled and mixed up as the pieces of Nasreen’s own story.

  In 1984, at the age of five, Nasreen started attending one of the first coeducational schools to open up in the north of Pakistan, a region where women were traditionally denied the opportunity to learn reading and writing. Excelling at her
classes, she distinguished herself as one of the smartest students in the school until 1992, when her mother unexpectedly died of pneumonia and Nasreen was forced to abandon her studies in order to care for her blind father, Sultan Mehmood, and her four siblings. Eventually her father remarried, and Nasreen’s new stepmother, a woman who believed that girls had no business pursuing education, would taunt Nasreen late at night when she tried to continue her studies by the light of a kerosene lantern. “Women should work instead of reading books,” her stepmother would rail. “Books will poison your mind and you will become a worthless wife and mother!”

  Nasreen didn’t see it that way. During her school years, she had acquired a rather bold dream for someone with resources as limited as hers: She had resolved that one day she would become a maternal health-care provider—a profession she had first been exposed to when roving government health-care teams would make their annual rounds through the local villages. She vividly remembers the joy with which she anticipated immunization shots, just so she could interact with the workers in their white cloaks. “My favorite smell was the antiseptic they would use,” she says. “Also, I envied how they would write down all the babies’ names, heights and weights, and immunization details in tidy rows in a spiral notebook.”

  Fueled by her dream, Nasreen studied relentlessly, despite her stepmother’s harassment. “After tending to my brothers and sisters and doing all the household work,” she recalls, “I would wait till everyone was asleep, and then late at night I would read.” She persisted in this manner until 1995 when, at the age of fifteen, she received her metric diploma—the equivalent of a high-school degree—becoming one of the first of a handful of women from northern Pakistan’s Hunza region ever to do so. As the brightest student and one of the first female graduates for miles around, she was now poised to make good on her ambition.