Free Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way by Jon Krakauer Page A

demanded, “ We know about Dr. Greg build school in Pakistan so you can come build for us? ” Khan invited Mortenson to ride back over the pass with him and remain in the Wakhan for the winter as his guest, “ so we can have good discuss and make school. ”
    Mortenson explained to Khan that his wife expected him back in Montana in a few days, so he couldn ’ t hie off to the Pamir for the winter. But he silently “ swore to himself he ’ d find some way ” to help Khan and his fellow Kyrgyz, and then promised he ’ d come visit Khan as soon as possible to talk about the school. Satisfied, Roshan Khan jumped on his horse and rode back over the mountains to the Wakhan, where he related the pledge he ’ d extracted from Mortenson to his father — a venerated figure named Abdul Rashid Khan, supreme leader of the Afghan Kyrgyz, who plays a starring role in the finale of Stones into Schools .
    In Stones (pages 29 – 30), Mortenson says his encounter with Roshan Khan occurred in 1999, rather than 2000, and includes a number of details that are at odds with the account in Three Cups . But no matter: According to Mortenson, he had sworn a solemn oath. “ Just as Three Cups of Tea began with a promise — to build a school in Korphe, Pakistan — so too does Mortenson ’ s new book, ” proclaims the dust jacket for Stones : “ to construct a school in an isolated pocket of the Pamir Mountains known as Bozai Gumbaz. ”
    Sixty-four pages into the book, Mortenson expounds further on his promise to the Kyrgyz:
 
Roshan Khan and I enacted a ritual that I recognized from six years earlier, when Haji Ali had stood in the barley fields of Korphe and asked me to provide an assurance that I was coming back to him. The leader of the Kirghiz horsemen placed his hand on my left shoulder, and I did the same with him.
“ So, you will promise to come to Wakhan to build a school for our children? ” he asked, looking me in the eye.
In a place like Zuudkhan, an affirmative response to a question like that can confer an obligation that is akin to a blood oath — and for someone like me, this can be a real problem … . Over the years I have missed so many plane flights, failed to appear at so many appointments, and broken so many obligations that I long ago stopped keeping track. But education is a sacred thing, and the pledge to build a school is a commitment that cannot be surrendered or broken, regardless of how long it may take, how many obstacles must be surmounted, or how much money it will cost. It is by such promises that the balance sheet of one ’ s life is measured.
     
    By such promises, indeed. Mortenson ’ s sacred pledge to Haji Ali to build a school in Korphe — to repay the villagers for their charity, and to honor his beloved sister — turned out to be a whopper, calculated to sell books and jack up donations. So too did Mortenson ’ s promise to construct a school in Bozai.
     
    * * *
     
    FOR THE FIRST PHASE OF THE BOZAI GUMBAZ PROJECT, Mortenson asked an anthropologist named Ted Callahan to help him. An expert mountaineer and climbing guide, Callahan had recently begun research for a doctoral thesis about the Afghan Kyrgyz, and Mortenson wondered if Callahan would be willing to travel to the Kyrgyz homeland — at the easternmost end of the Wakhan Corridor, part of the so-called Pamir Knot, one of the world ’ s most impressive concentrations of mountains — to work as a consultant for CAI in the spring of 2006. Mortenson explained to Callahan, “ I view this as an opportunity where you can help me out, we can help the Kyrgyz out, and I can help you get started with your research. ” Callahan thought it sounded like a worthy endeavor. He immediately signed on.
    CAI had by then built several schools in Afghanistan ’ s Badakshan Province, which encompasses the Wakhan Corridor, but none of the projects was in the high Pamir, where Bozai Gumbaz is situated. Mortenson had never been to the Pamir. There are