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

no roads there. The Wakhan Kyrgyz are nomads who migrate from place to place as they graze their herds. There was no village at Bozai; it was just an expanse of alpine meadow distinguished by a Kyrgyz burial ground and a few mud huts that remained unoccupied most of the year. “ My job, ” says Callahan, “ was to get with the Kyrgyz and figure out how to build a school for a nomadic people. ”
    Callahan ’ s initial trip to the Wakhan was not propitious. In Kabul, he met Sarfraz Khan, CAI ’ s program director for northern Afghanistan, who would travel with him through the Wakhan. Right away, Callahan says, “ it became obvious that CAI had no official presence in Afghanistan. It was this seat-of-the-pants operation … . Greg had spoken so highly of Sarfraz, but he can ’ t even get us seats on the flight to get up there. He ’ s like, ‘ We ’ re kind of somewhat unregistered. ’” Fortunately, Callahan had attended prep school with the Afghan minister of transportation. He phoned the minister, who arranged for him to book two seats on a flight to Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan, Afghanistan ’ s northernmost province.
    Before they flew north, however, Sarfraz learned that a crew of Pakistani workers he had hired to build some schools had gotten arrested and detained for entering Afghanistan illegally. When Sarfraz ’ s increasingly desperate attempts to get the workers released failed, he begged Callahan for help. Callahan explained the situation to his mentor, Whitney Azoy, an eminent anthropologist who ran the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies, in Kabul. Azoy hosted a dinner for an influential parliamentarian, whom Azoy introduced to Callahan and Sarfraz, and the next day the CAI workers were released. Instead of thanking Callahan for engineering a solution to this serious problem, however, Mortenson became apoplectic. “ How dare you compromise my operation! ” he blustered.
    “ It was very odd. ” Callahan recalls. “ Greg was really pissed off: ‘ You guys should not have gotten the government involved in this! I do not work with the government! We deal with local power brokers; that ’ s how we get stuff done! You have now invited government scrutiny into our operation! We do not need Whitney Azoy ’ s help with anything! ’”
    When Callahan told Azoy about Mortenson ’ s reaction to his gracious act, Azoy was struck with an insight: “ Maybe Mortenson thinks he ’ s a white knight, riding in to rescue Afghanistan single-handedly, ” he said.  “ Afghanistan ’ s full of expats who want to be saviors. Once they get that idea in their heads, there ’ s not room for much else. ”
    By the time Callahan and Sarfraz arrived in Badakhshan and started driving toward the Wakhan Corridor, Callahan ’ s assessment of Sarfraz, at least, had grown more positive. “ He ’ s actually a very good guy, ” says Callahan. As they slowly traveled east down the unpaved, single-lane track, they stopped to inspect several CAI schools under construction, pay laborers for work they had completed, and give them instructions for future tasks. “ Things are going pretty well, ” Callahan says. “ Then we get to the end of the road, the last village, called Sarhad-i-Boroghil. ”
    From there they intended to ride horses the final forty or fifty miles to Bozai Gumbaz, but someone had committed a double murder in Sarhad, and the village was swarming with police who ’ d come to investigate the crime. The police also used the investigation as a pretext to shake down the local citizenry, detaining as a suspect anyone who failed to pay. Because of this tense and potentially dangerous situation, Sarfraz decided to turn around and head back to Faizabad. Not long thereafter, he suffered an acute gallstone attack in the middle of the night, and the ailment appeared to be life threatening.
    “ He looked like death, ” Callahan says. “ He ’ s puking. He ’ s doubled over in pain. The nearest