Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way (4 page)

After nearly a year of fundraising, Mortenson had little to show for his efforts until the summer of 1994, when Stone included a short article by Mortenson in the American Himalayan Foundation newsletter.
“
I came to Hushe as part of an expedition to K2 in 1993,
”
he wrote.

After seventy days on the mountain, I spent some time in Khane. When I asked to see the school, the villagers took me up to a dusty apricot grove on a hill behind the village. A group of 85 children, five to twelve years old, were sitting in the dirt, reciting spelling tables
…
. Despite abject poverty, their spirits soared. It was obvious that these children were intensely loved by their community, that their well-being was a top priority. But the village simply had no money for education or health care
…
. So I made the commitment to help realize a school and clinic in Khane.

I started this project because I care deeply about these people. Two years ago, my youngest sister Christa died suddenly after a valiant 23-year struggle with epilepsy. During her short life, her joyful spirit touched many people, especially me. The Khane School Project is my way of honoring her. If you
’
d like to be part of this project, please give us a call.

Upon reading the article, a wealthy AHF supporter named Jean Hoerni gave Mortenson $12,000
—
enough, by Greg
’
s estimation, to build a simple five-room school building in Khane. In October 1994, Mortenson flew to Pakistan, purchased $8,000 worth of lumber and cement in Rawalpindi, and then hired a garishly decorated
“
jingle
”
truck to transport everything up the Karakoram Highway to Skardu. There, the building materials were unloaded at a compound owned by Mohammed Ali Changazi, the tour operator and trekking agent who had managed the logistics for Mortenson
’
s K2 expedition the previous year. When Mortenson arrived in Skardu in 1994, he intended to build the school in Khane village, as he
’
d pledged to Akhmalu in 1993. But Mortenson had discussed his plans with Changazi, who tipped off the chieftain of a village called Korphe
—
a Balti elder named Haji Ali
—
who had legally adopted Changazi as a boy.

When he learned from his adopted son that a starry-eyed American was coming to build a school, Haji Ali resolved to get the school built in
his
village, Korphe, rather than Akhmalu
’
s village. Only Mortenson and Changazi know exactly what happened next
—
Haji Ali died in 2001
—
but a few days after the truckload of construction materials was stacked in Changazi
’
s compound, Changazi introduced Mortenson to Haji Ali. Shortly thereafter, Mortenson reneged on his pledge to build the school in Khane and announced that he intended to build it in Korphe instead.

All of this diverges in irreconcilable ways from the heartwarming tale recounted in the first hundred pages of
Three Cups of Tea
. A passage on page 97,
for example, describes Mortenson
’
s triumphant
“
return
”
to Korphe in 1994, in which Mortenson, looking Haji Ali in the eye, declares,
“
I came back to keep my promise.
”
²
In fact, Mortenson had never set foot in Korphe until that moment, and rather than keeping a promise, he was breaking the vow he had made to Khane. On page 89, Mortenson adds insult to this injury when he chastises the Khane villagers,
“
I never made any promise,
”
accusing them of being greedy shysters for trying to hold him to the pledge he
’
d made in his sister
’
s name
—
a commitment memorialized in the article he
’
d written a few months previously.

*
*
*

Naimat Gul remembers meeting Mortenson outside the latter
’
s hotel in the city of Rawalpindi, a couple of miles from the Islamabad airport:
“
It was just after dawn. There were light rain showers, and a cool breeze was blowing
…
. I saw a person making videos, and he suddenly turned his face towards me and waved his hand.
”
A friendly conversation ensued. When Naimat Gul proudly explained that he was a member of the indomitable Mahsud tribe, and hailed from South Waziristan Agency, a region strictly off-limits to foreigners, Mortenson
’
s
“
face filled with curiousness,
”
Naimat Gul recalls,
“
and he said he was anxious to visit. He asked me if this was possible. I said,
‘
Yes, why not? You may go with me if you are seriously intended.
’…
I briefed him that he would be bound not to tell any government official,
”
lest Mortenson be arrested for illegally entering the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA.

Naimat Gul later sent me a handwritten card from Mortenson confirming their plan to embark on the long drive to Naimat Gul
’
s ancestral homeland on July 13, 1996, in a Toyota Corolla that Naimat Gul had rented.
After spending their first night together in Peshawar, Mortenson and Naimat Gul hit the road again early on July 14, crossing the border into the forbidden tribal areas at midday.
As they continued driving west and then south, the flat, barren earth rose into a labyrinth of high ridges bristling with thorn-studded oaks. It was a rugged landscape, but a lovely one
—
somewhat reminiscent of the country around Bozeman, Montana, where four months earlier Greg and Tara had moved to raise a family. Late in the afternoon, Mortenson and Naimat Gul passed from North Waziristan into South Waziristan, and as the sun went down they arrived in Tehsil Ladha, Naimat Gul
’
s home turf (a
tehsil
is a Pakistani administrative division roughly analogous to an American county).

Little did Naimat Gul know, when he offered to take Mortenson to his village and serve as his host and guardian there, that his amiable guest would one day write a book in which their pleasant sojourn would be transformed into an elaborate tale of abduction and intimidation at the hands of murderous
jihadis
—
an account that fills an entire chapter of
Three Cups of Tea
(pages 154-173) and that Mortenson has repeated in hundreds of media interviews.

In most of these interviews, Mortenson has distilled the story into an attention-grabbing sound bite. During an appearance on
CBS Evening News
on October 23, 2008, for example, he said of the experience,
“
I was kidnapped for eight days in Waziristan by the Taliban.
”
In a two-minute promotional video posted on the website of his book publisher, Penguin,
Mortenson was slightly more loquacious:
“
I got kidnapped by the Taliban for eight days
…
. It was quite a frightening experience. The first three days, all I could think about is they might take me outside at any moment and finish me off.
”

In
Three Cups of Tea
, however, where he had room to get creative, Mortenson spun a long, fantastical yarn festooned with enthralling details. In this account, Mortenson first encountered Naimat Gul Mahsud in the treacherous city of Peshawar rather than Rawalpindi (where the two men actually met), and Naimat Gul
’
s name was changed to
“
Mr. Khan.
”
Just before sunset, they arrived in Ladha, South Waziristan, and
“
Khan
”
parked his gray Toyota inside a warehouse for
the night.

The scene inside the warehouse set Mortenson immediately on edge. Six Wazir men with bandoliers criss-crossed on their chests slumped on packing crates smoking hashish from a multinecked hookah. Piled against the walls, Mortenson saw stacks of bazookas, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and crates of oily new AK-47s
…
.

Khan and the elder of the gang, a tall man with rose-colored aviator glasses and a thick black mustache that perched, batlike, on his upper lip, talked heatedly in Pashto about what to do with the outsider for the evening. After they
’
d finished, [Khan] took a long draw from the hookah and turned to Mortenson.
“
Haji Mirza please to invite you to his house,
”
he said, smoke dribbling through his teeth.

The fictional Haji Mirza, the fellow with the batlike mustache, lived in a hilltop compound where a
“
gun tower rose fifty feet above the courtyard so snipers could pick off anyone approaching uninvited.
”
After a meal of roast lamb, during which the Wazir tribesmen
“
attacked it with their long daggers, stripping tender meat from the bone and cramming it into their mouths with the blades of their knives,
”
Mortenson fell asleep on the floor of the compound. Two hours later he was rudely awakened by someone dangling a kerosene lantern in front of his face,

sending
shadows lurching grotesquely up the walls. Behind the lamp, Mortenson saw the barrel of an AK-47 aimed, he realized, his consciousness ratcheting up a notch with this information, at his chest. Behind the gun, a wild man with a matted beard and gray turban was shouting in a language he didn
’
t understand.