Early on an April morning in 1998, Parvi appeared at the door to Mortenson's room in the Indus Hotel and told him they'd both been summoned.

Mortenson shaved and changed into the cleanest of the five mud-colored shalwar kamiz shalwar kamiz he'd by then acc.u.mulated. he'd by then acc.u.mulated.

The Imam Bara Mosque, like much of Shia Pakistan, showed little of its face to the outside world. Its high earthern walls were unadorned, and it focused its energies inward, except for a tall, green-and-blue-painted minaret mounted with loudspeakers to summon the faithful inside.

They were led through the courtyard, and into an arched doorway. Mortenson brushed aside a heavy chocolate-colored velvet curtain and approached the mosque's inner sanctum, a place no infidel had been invited before. Mortenson, making sure to step carefully over the threshold with his right foot, to avoid offense, entered.

Inside stood the eight imposing black-turbaned members of the Council of Mullahs. From the severity with which Syed Mohammed Abbas Risvi greeted him, Mortenson presumed the worst. With Parvi, he sank heavily down on an exquisite Isfahan carpet woven with a pattern of flowing vines. Syed Abbas motioned for the rest of the council to join them in a circle on the carpet, then sat himself, placing a small red velvet box on the plush wool before his knees.

With due ceremony, Syed Abbas tilted back the lid of the box, withdrew a scroll of parchment wrapped in red ribbon, unfurled it, and revealed Mortenson's future. "Dear Compa.s.sionate of the Poor," he translated from the elegant Farsi calligraphy, "our Holy Koran tells us all children should receive education, including our daughters and sisters. Your n.o.ble work follows the highest principles of Islam, to tend to the poor and sick. In the Holy Koran there is no law to prohibit an infidel from providing a.s.sistance to our Muslim brothers and sisters. Therefore," the decree concluded, "we direct all clerics in Pakistan to not interfere with your n.o.ble intentions. You have our permission, blessings, and prayers."

Syed Abbas rolled the scroll, stowed it in the red velvet box, and presented it to Mortenson, grinning. Then he offered his hand.

Mortenson shook the hand of each member of the council in turn, his head swimming. "Does this mean..." he tried to speak. "The fatwa, fatwa, is it..." is it..."

"Forget all that small-minded, small-village nonsense," Parvi said, beaming. "We have the blessing of the highest mufti mufti in Iran. No Shia will dare to interfere with our work now, in Iran. No Shia will dare to interfere with our work now, Inshallah Inshallah."

Syed Abbas called for tea. "I want to speak with you about another matter," he said, relaxing now that his formal duty had been discharged. "I'd like to propose a little collaboration."

That spring, word of the ruling in the red velvet box spread throughout Baltistan more thoroughly than the glacial melt.w.a.ter trickling down to its valleys from the high Karakoram. Mortenson's peaceful morning gatherings over tea in the lobby of the Indus Hotel grew too large for the two tables and had to be moved to a banquet room upstairs, where the meetings became increasingly raucous. Each day he was in Skardu, emissaries from Baltistan's hundreds of remote villages sought him out with pet.i.tions for new projects, now that he had the Supreme Council of Ayatollahs' stamp of approval.

Mortenson began taking his meals in the hotel kitchen, where he could finish an omelette or a plate of vegetable curry without having to respond to a note, in tortured English, asking for a loan to kick-start a semiprecious-stone-mining venture, or funds to rebuild a neglected village mosque.

Though he didn't fully recognize it yet, a new phase in Mortenson's life had now begun. He no longer had the time to speak with everyone who came to him with a request, though, at first, he tried. He'd been busy before, but now each day seemed five or six hours too brief. He set himself the task of sifting through the flood of requests for the few worthy projects he had the means and ability to accomplish.

Syed Abbas, whose influence extended up dozens of wild mountain valleys, had an acute sense of each community's needs. He told Mortenson he agreed that education was the only long-term tactic to combat poverty. But he argued that the children of Baltistan faced a more immediate crisis. In villages like Chunda, in the lower Shigar Valley, Syed Abbas said, more than one child in three died before celebrating their first birthday. Poor hygiene and lack of clean drinking water were the culprits, he said.

Mortenson wove this new strand into his mission enthusiastically. One had to water a plant before it could be coaxed to grow; children had to survive long enough to benefit from school. With Syed Abbas, he visited the nurmadhar nurmadhar of Chunda, Haji Ibramin, and convinced him to put the men of his village at their disposal. Residents of four neighboring villages requested permission to join the project. And with hundreds of workers digging trenches ten hours a day they completed the project in one week. Through twelve thousand feet of pipe Mortenson provided, fresh spring water flowed to public taps in the five villages. of Chunda, Haji Ibramin, and convinced him to put the men of his village at their disposal. Residents of four neighboring villages requested permission to join the project. And with hundreds of workers digging trenches ten hours a day they completed the project in one week. Through twelve thousand feet of pipe Mortenson provided, fresh spring water flowed to public taps in the five villages.

"I came to respect and depend on the vision of Syed Abbas," Mortenson says. "He's the type of religious leader I admire most. He is about compa.s.sion in action, not talk. He doesn't just lock himself up with his books. Syed Abbas believes in rolling up his sleeves and making the world a better place. Because of his work, the women of Chunda no longer had to walk long distances to find clean water. And overnight, the infant mortality rate of a community of two thousand people was cut in half."

At a meeting before Mortenson left for Pakistan, the board had approved the construction of three more schools in the spring and summer of 1998. Mouzafer's school was Mortenson's priority. During their last few visits, Mouzafer hadn't seemed himself. The oxlike strength of the man who led him off the Baltoro was less evident. He'd become increasingly deaf. And as with so many Balti men who've labored for years in the elements, the onset of old age stalked him as swiftly as a snow leopard.

Halde, Mouzafer's village, was in the lush Lower Hushe Valley. By the bank of the Shyok River, where it slows and widens before meeting the Indus, Halde was as perfect a place as Mortenson had seen in Pakistan. Irrigation channels trickled through neat patchwork fields that rolled down to the riverbank. The village pathways were shaded by mature apricot and mulberry trees. "Halde is my kind of Shangri-La. It's the kind of place I could see bringing a pile of books, taking my shoes off, and hiding out for a very long time," Mortenson says. He had no such luxury. But Mouzafer, his trekking days having come to an end, envisioned his last quiet years spent here in his small home surrounded by orchards and his children and their children, far below the land of eternal ice.

With the process he, Parvi, and Makhmal had now perfected, Mortenson obtained a plot of open land between two groves of apricot trees and, with the village's help, built a st.u.r.dy stone four-cla.s.s-room school in three months, for just over twelve thousand dollars. Mouzafer's grandfather Bowa Johar had been a poet, renowned throughout Baltistan. Mouzafer had labored as a simple porter his whole adult life, and enjoyed no special standing in Halde. But his ability to bring a school to the village conferred a new level of respect on the kindly man who carried quarried rocks to the construction site and raised roof beams, though younger hands tried to shift the burden from his shoulders.

Standing with Mortenson before the finished school, watching Halde's children stretch on tiptoe to look through unfamiliar gla.s.s panes at the mysterious rooms where they would start cla.s.s in the fall, Mouzafer took Mortenson's hand in both of his.

"My upside days are over, Greg Sahib," he said. "I'd like to work with you for many years more, but Allah, in his wisdom, has taken much of my strength."

Mortenson hugged this man who'd helped him so often to find his way. Despite Mouzafer's talk of weakness, his arms were still strong enough to squeeze the breath out of a large American. "What will you do?" Mortenson asked.

"My work now," Mouzafer said simply, "is to give water to the trees."

High up at the head of the Hushe Valley, in the shadow of Masher-brum's hanging glaciers, Mohammed Aslam Khan had been a boy in the time before roads. There was nothing wrong with life in the village of Hushe. It proceeded as it always had. In the summer, boys like Aslam led the sheep and goats to high pastures while the women made yoghurt and cheese. From the highest grazing grounds, the mountain they called Chogo Ri, or "Big Mountain," known to the wider world as K2, could be seen thrusting into the heavens over Masherbrum's broad shoulder.

In the fall, Aslam took turns with other village boys driving a team of six panting yak in circles around a pole, so their heavy hooves would thresh the newly harvested wheat. Throughout the long winter, he would huddle as near to the fire as he could creep, competing with his five brothers, three sisters, and the family's livestock to find the warmest spot on the coldest days. would thresh the newly harvested wheat. Throughout the long winter, he would huddle as near to the fire as he could creep, competing with his five brothers, three sisters, and the family's livestock to find the warmest spot on the coldest days.

This was life. It was how every boy in Hushe could expect to spend his days. But Aslam's father, Golowa Ali, was the nurmadhar nurmadhar of Hushe. Everyone said Aslam was the cleverest child in the family, and his father had other plans for him. of Hushe. Everyone said Aslam was the cleverest child in the family, and his father had other plans for him.

In late spring, when the worst of the weather had retreated, but the Shyok still ran fast with glacial melt, Golowa Ali woke his son up before first light and told him to prepare to leave the village. Aslam couldn't imagine what he meant. But when he saw that his father had packed luggage for him, wrapping a block of churpa, churpa, hard sheep cheese, into a bundle of clothes, he began to cry. hard sheep cheese, into a bundle of clothes, he began to cry.

Questioning his father's will was not allowed, but Aslam challenged the village chief anyway.

"Why do I have to go?" he said, turning to his mother for support. By the light of a guttering oil lamp, Aslam was shocked to see that she, too, was crying.

"You're going to school," his father said.

Aslam walked downside with his father for two days. Like every Hushe boy, Aslam had roamed the narrow mountain paths that clung to the bare cliffsides like ivy tendrils to stone walls. But he had never been so far from home. Down here the earth was sandy and free of snow. Behind him, Masherbrum had lost the rea.s.suring bulk that placed it at the center of the known universe. It was only one mountain among many.

When the trail ended at the bank of the Shyok, Golowa Ali hung a leather pouch containing two gold coins around his son's neck on a cord. "When, Inshallah, Inshallah, you get to the town of Khaplu, you will find a school. Give the Sahib who runs the school these coins to pay for your education." you get to the town of Khaplu, you will find a school. Give the Sahib who runs the school these coins to pay for your education."

"When will I come home?" Aslam asked, trying to control his trembling lips.

"You'll know when," his father said. Golowa Ali inflated six goat bladders and lashed them together into a zaks, zaks, or raft, the traditional Balti means of fording a river when it ran too deep to cross on foot. "Now hold on tight," he said. or raft, the traditional Balti means of fording a river when it ran too deep to cross on foot. "Now hold on tight," he said.

Aslam couldn't swim.

"When my father put me in the water I couldn't control myself and I cried. He was a strong man, and proud, but as I floated away down the Shyok, I saw he had tears in his eyes, too."

Aslam clung to the zaks zaks as the Shyok sucked him from his father's sight. He bobbed over rapids, sobbing openly now that no one was watching, shivering in the water's glacial chill. After a pa.s.sage of blurred terror that might have taken ten minutes or two hours, Aslam noticed he was moving more slowly as the river widened. He saw some people on the far bank and kicked toward them, too afraid of losing the as the Shyok sucked him from his father's sight. He bobbed over rapids, sobbing openly now that no one was watching, shivering in the water's glacial chill. After a pa.s.sage of blurred terror that might have taken ten minutes or two hours, Aslam noticed he was moving more slowly as the river widened. He saw some people on the far bank and kicked toward them, too afraid of losing the zaks zaks to use his arms. to use his arms.

"An old man fished me out of the water and wrapped me in a warm yak-hair blanket," Aslam said. "I was still shivering and crying and he asked me why I had crossed the river, so I told him of my fa-ther's instructions."

"Don't be afraid," the old man counseled Aslam. "You're a brave boy to come so far from home. One day, you'll be honored by everyone when you return." He stuffed two wrinkled rupee notes into Aslam's hand and accompanied him down the path toward Khaplu, until he could hand him off to another elder.

In this fashion, Aslam and his story traveled down the Lower Hushe Valley. He was pa.s.sed from hand to hand, and each man who accompanied him made a small contribution toward his education. "People were so kind that I was very encouraged," Aslam remembers. "And soon I was enrolled in a government school in Khaplu, and studying as hard as I was able."

Students in bustling Khaplu, the largest settlement Aslam had ever seen, were cosmopolitan by comparison. They teased Aslam about his appearance. "I wore yak-skin shoes and woolen clothes and all the students had fine uniforms," Aslam says. Teachers, taking pity, pooled their money and purchased a white shirt, maroon sweater, and black trousers for Aslam so he could blend in with the other boys. He wore the uniform every day and cleaned it as well as he could at night. And after his first year of school, when he walked back up the Hushe Valley to visit his family, he made the impression the old man who plucked him out of the Shyok had predicted.

"When I went upside," Aslam says. "I was clean and wearing my uniform. Everyone was gazing at me and saying I had changed. Everyone honored me. I realized I must live up to this honor."

In 1976, after Aslam graduated at the top of the Tenth Cla.s.s in Khaplu, he was offered a post with the government of the Northern Areas. But he decided to return home to Hushe, and after his father's death, was elected nurmadhar. nurmadhar. "I had seen how people live downside and it was my duty to work to improve the quality of life upside in my village," Aslam says. "I had seen how people live downside and it was my duty to work to improve the quality of life upside in my village," Aslam says.

Pet.i.tioning the government officials who had offered him a job, Aslam helped convince the Northern Areas Administration to bulldoze and blast a dirt road all the way up the valley to Hushe. He also pestered them into funding a small school he built in a drafty farm shed for twenty-five boys, but Aslam had trouble convincing the families of his village to send their sons to study in this poorly equipped building, rather than work in the fields. The men of Hushe waylaid Aslam as he walked, whispering bribes of b.u.t.ter and bags of flour if he'd exempt their sons from school.

As his own children reached school age, Aslam realized he needed help if he hoped to educate all of them. "I have been blessed nine times," Aslam says. "With five boys and four girls. But my daughter Shakeela is the most clever among them. There was nowhere for her to pursue her studies and she was too young to send away. Although many thousand climbers had pa.s.sed through my village for many years not one had offered to help our children. I began to hear rumors about a big Angrezi Angrezi who was building schools that welcomed both boys and girls all over Baltistan, and I decided to seek him out." who was building schools that welcomed both boys and girls all over Baltistan, and I decided to seek him out."

In the spring of 1997, Aslam traveled two days by jeep to Skardu and asked for Mortenson at the Indus Hotel, only to be told he had left for the Upper Braldu Valley and might be gone for weeks. "I left a letter for the Angrezi, Angrezi, inviting him to my village," Aslam says, "but I never heard from him." Then one June day in 1998, when he was home in Hushe, Aslam learned from a jeep driver that the inviting him to my village," Aslam says, "but I never heard from him." Then one June day in 1998, when he was home in Hushe, Aslam learned from a jeep driver that the Angrezi Angrezi was only a few villages down the valley, in Khane. was only a few villages down the valley, in Khane.

"That spring I had come back to Khane," Mortenson says, "figuring I'd call a jirga, jirga, a big meeting, and get everyone to outvote Janjungpa so I could finally build a school there." But Janjungpa, not willing to relinquish his fantasy of a climbing school of his own, had contacted the local police, and told them the one thing certain to arouse suspicion about an outsider in this sensitive border region. "He said I was a spy, working for their archenemy," Mortenson says. "India." a big meeting, and get everyone to outvote Janjungpa so I could finally build a school there." But Janjungpa, not willing to relinquish his fantasy of a climbing school of his own, had contacted the local police, and told them the one thing certain to arouse suspicion about an outsider in this sensitive border region. "He said I was a spy, working for their archenemy," Mortenson says. "India."

As Mortenson struggled to placate a policeman demanding that he hand over his pa.s.sport for inspection, Aslam arrived in a borrowed jeep and introduced himself. "I told him, 'I am the nurmadhar nurmadhar of Hushe and I've been trying to meet you for one year now,' " Aslam remembers. "I said, 'Please, in evening time, you come to Hushe and attend our tea party.' " Mortenson was coming to consider Khane a cursed village. He no longer wanted a full moon, tottering on the canyon's rim, to fall and crush it. But he was happy to have an excuse to leave. of Hushe and I've been trying to meet you for one year now,' " Aslam remembers. "I said, 'Please, in evening time, you come to Hushe and attend our tea party.' " Mortenson was coming to consider Khane a cursed village. He no longer wanted a full moon, tottering on the canyon's rim, to fall and crush it. But he was happy to have an excuse to leave.

An innovator educationally and otherwise, Aslam had painted the walls of his house with bold geometric designs in primary colors. To Mortenson, the house had a vaguely African flavor that made him feel instantly at home. On the roof, he sipped paiyu cha paiyu cha deep into the night with his new friend the deep into the night with his new friend the nurmadhar, nurmadhar, hearing the story of Aslam's odyssey. And by the time the rising sun iced the hanging glaciers of Masherbrum pale pink, like a gargantuan pastry dangling above them at breakfast time, Mortenson had agreed to shift the funds his board had approved for the doomed Khane school upside to this village whose headman had traveled so far downriver to educate himself. hearing the story of Aslam's odyssey. And by the time the rising sun iced the hanging glaciers of Masherbrum pale pink, like a gargantuan pastry dangling above them at breakfast time, Mortenson had agreed to shift the funds his board had approved for the doomed Khane school upside to this village whose headman had traveled so far downriver to educate himself.

"After seeking him all over Baltistan, I was very surprised when I finally met Dr. Greg," Aslam says. "I expected to have to plead with an Angrezi Sahib Angrezi Sahib like a little man. But he spoke to me as a brother. I found Greg a very kind, soft-hearted, naturally pleasing man. When I first met him, I actually fell in love with his personality. Every year since we built our school this feeling gets stronger, and finally, that love has spread to all my children and all the families of Hushe." like a little man. But he spoke to me as a brother. I found Greg a very kind, soft-hearted, naturally pleasing man. When I first met him, I actually fell in love with his personality. Every year since we built our school this feeling gets stronger, and finally, that love has spread to all my children and all the families of Hushe."

The building Aslam and the other men of his village constructed in the summer of 1998, with funds and a.s.sistance from Mortenson's CAI, may be the most beautiful school in northern Pakistan. It is nothing if not a monument to the hope Aslam convinced his village to invest in its children. Mortenson turned the particulars of design over to the nurmadhar, nurmadhar, and Aslam's vision is evident in the scarlet-painted finely turned wooden trim adorning every window, roofline, and doorway. Along the borders of the school's walled courtyard, sunflowers grow higher than even the oldest students throughout the warmer months. And the inspiring view that greets these students from every cla.s.sroom-the roof of the world, represented by Masherbrum's soaring summit ridge-has already helped convince many of Hushe's children to aim high. and Aslam's vision is evident in the scarlet-painted finely turned wooden trim adorning every window, roofline, and doorway. Along the borders of the school's walled courtyard, sunflowers grow higher than even the oldest students throughout the warmer months. And the inspiring view that greets these students from every cla.s.sroom-the roof of the world, represented by Masherbrum's soaring summit ridge-has already helped convince many of Hushe's children to aim high.

In a house he recently rented for her, near the Government Girl's High School she attends today in Khaplu, Aslam's eldest daughter, Shakeela, reflects on the path the Hushe School opened to her the year it first appeared in her village, when she was eight years old. Sitting cross-legged on a rough striped wool carpet next to her distinguished father, Shakeela, poised and pretty at fifteen, smiles confidently out from under a cream-colored shawl festooned with falling leaves as she speaks.

"At first, when I began to attend school, many people in my village told me a girl has no business doing such a thing," Shakeela says. "They said you will end up working in the field, like all women, so why fill your head with the foolishness found in books? But I knew how much my father valued education, so I tried to shut my mind to the talk and I persisted with my studies."

"I have tried to encourage all of my children," Aslam says, nodding toward two of Shakeela's older brothers, college students who live with her in Khaplu and act as chaperones. "But I saw a special att.i.tude in this girl from an early age."

Shakeela covers her face with her shawl in embarra.s.sment, then brushes it aside to speak. "I am not such a special student," she says. "But I was able to pa.s.s through school in Hushe with good marks."

Adjusting to cosmopolitan Khaplu has proven harder. "The environment here is very exceptional," Shakeela says. "Everything is quick. Everything is available." She shows her father a recent physics exam, on which she is ashamed to have scored only an 82. "My cla.s.ses are very difficult here, but I am adjusting," she says. "In Hushe, I was the most advanced student. Here at least there is always a senior student or teacher available to help when I lose my way."

With a road in place now to take her all the way downside, Sha-keela's route to higher education in Khaplu wasn't as physically dangerous as her father's. But in her own way, she has blazed just as dramatic a trail. "Shakeela is the first girl in all of the Hushe Valley to be granted the privilege of a higher education," Aslam says proudly. "And now, all the girls of Hushe look up to her."

Her father's praise drives Shakeela back, briefly, behind her shawl. "People's minds in Hushe are beginning to change," Shakeela says, emerging once again. "Now when I return to my village, I see all the families sending their girls to school. And they tell me, 'Shakeela, we were mistaken. You were right to read so many books and brave to study so far from home. You're bringing honor to the village.' "

If she can master difficult new subjects like physics, Shakeela says she wants to go as far as her education can take her-ideally to medical school. "I'd like to become a doctor and go to work wherever I am needed," she says. "I've learned the world is a very large place and so far, I've only seen a little of it."

Shakeela's academic success is influencing not only the women of Hushe Valley, but her elder brothers as well. Yakub, eighteen, attended university in Lah.o.r.e for a year, but failed six of his eight cla.s.ses. Enrolled now in a local college in Khaplu, he is rededicating himself to his studies in hopes of earning a government post. "I have no choice," Yakub says, sheepishly adjusting a baseball cap bearing a gold star, the kind of mark his sister earned frequently during her years at the Hushe School. "My sister is pushing me. She works hard, so I must, too."

Studying a sheaf of Shakeela's recent work, Aslam finds a test on which his daughter has scored a perfect 100-an Urdu exam. He holds the page tenderly, like a nugget of precious ore sifted from the Shyok. "For these blessings, I thank Almighty Allah," Aslam says, "and Mister Greg Mortenson."

Across northern Pakistan, thousands of people likewise sang Mortenson's praises throughout the summer and fall of 1998. Returning to Peshawar, the city that continued to fascinate him, Mortenson toured the refugee camps that strained to feed, shelter, and educate hundreds of thousands, now that the Taliban's ruthless brand of fundamentalist Islam had conquered most of Afghanistan. Constructing schools under such apocalyptic conditions was clearly out of the question. But at the Shamshatoo Refugee Camp, southwest of Peshawar, he organized eighty teachers, who held cla.s.ses for four thousand Afghan students, and agreed to see that their salaries were paid as long as the refugees remained in Pakistan.

With eye disease rampant in northern Pakistan, Mortenson arranged for Dr. Geoff Tabin, an American cataract surgeon, to offer free surgery to sixty elderly patients in Skardu and Gilgit. And he sent Dr. Niaz Ali, the only eye doctor in Baltistan, to the renowned Tilanga Eye Hospital in Nepal for specialized training so he could perform the surgeries himself long after Dr. Tabin returned home to America.

After attending a conference of development experts in Bangladesh, Mortenson decided CAI schools should educate students only up through the fifth grade and focus on increasing the enrollment of girls. "Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in the cities," Mortenson explains. "But the girls stay home, become leaders in the community, and pa.s.s on what they've learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls."

b.u.mping up to each village where CAI operated in his green Land Cruiser, Mortenson held meetings with elders and insisted they sign pledges to increase the enrollment of girls at each school by 10 percent a year if they wanted CAI's continued support. "If the girls can just get to a fifth-grade level," Mortenson says, "everything changes."

The CAI's board of directors evolved along with its philosophy. George McCown's wife, Karen, who had founded a charter school in the Bay Area, joined, as did Abdul Jabbar, a Pakistani professor at the City College of San Francisco. The entire board was by now comprised of professional educators.

With a dozen schools now up and running, Julia Bergman, with the help of two teachers from the City College, Joy Durigh.e.l.lo and Bob Irwin, organized a teacher-training workshop to be held in Skardu each summer and compiled a permanent resource library for all of CAI's teachers. In meetings that summer in Skardu, with Ghulam Parvi, the master teachers Bergman brought to Pakistan from America, and all the Pakistani instructors on CAI's payroll, Mortenson hammered out an educational philosophy.

CAI schools would teach the exact same curriculum as any good Pakistani government school. There would be none of the "comparative cultures" cla.s.ses then so popular in the West, nothing conservative religious leaders could point to as "anti-Islamic" in an effort to shut the schools down. But neither would they let the schools preach the fiery brand of fundamentalist Islam taught in many of the coun-try's madra.s.sas. madra.s.sas.

"I don't want to teach Pakistan's children to think like Americans," Mortenson says. "I just want them to have a balanced, nonextremist education. That idea is at the very center of what we do."

Each successfully completed project added l.u.s.ter to Mortenson's reputation in northern Pakistan. His picture began to appear over the hearths of homes and on jeep drivers' dashboards. Bound by Islam's prohibition against false idols, Pakistanis don't embrace the endless pantheon of deities plastered across windshields in the Hindu country to the east. But as in India, certain public figures in Pakistan begin to transcend the merely mortal realm.

Cricket hero Imran Khan had become a sort of secular saint. And rippling out from Mortenson's headquarters in Skardu, over the parched dunes, through the twisting gorges, and up the weatherbound valleys of Baltistan, the legend of a gentle infidel called Dr. Greg was likewise growing.

CHAPTER 17.

CHERRY T TREES IN THE S SAND.

The most dangerous place in the world today, I think you could argue, is the Indian Subcontinent and the Line of Control in Kashmir.

-President Bill Clinton, before leaving Washington on a diplomatic visit to, and peacemaking mission between, India and Pakistan

Fatima Batool remembers the first "whump," clearly audible from the Indian artillery battery, just twelve kilometers across the mountains. She remembers the first sh.e.l.l whistling gracefully as it fell out of the blameless blue sky, and the way she and her sister Aamina, working together sowing buckwheat, looked at each other just before the first explosion.

In Brolmo, their village in the Gultori Valley, a place that appeared on maps carried by the Indian army across the nearby border as "Pak-istani-Occupied Kashmir," nothing new ever happened. At least that's the way it seemed to Fatima, at age ten. She remembers looking into her older sister's face when the sky began singing its unfamiliar song, and seeing her own surprise echoed there in Aamina's wide eyes, a look that said, "Here is something new."

But after the firestorm of flying metal from the first 155millimeter sh.e.l.l, Fatima chooses to remember as little as she possibly can. The images, like stones buried among coals to bake loaves of kurba, kurba, are too hot to touch. There were bodies, and parts of bodies, in the wheat field, as the whumps, whistles, and explosions came so quickly, so close together, that they became a single scream. are too hot to touch. There were bodies, and parts of bodies, in the wheat field, as the whumps, whistles, and explosions came so quickly, so close together, that they became a single scream.

Aamina grabbed Fatima's hand, and together, they joined the stampede of panicked villagers, running as fast as their legs could take them, but all too slowly all the same, toward caves where they could escape the sky.

From her haven in the anxious dark, Fatima can't or won't remember how Aamina came to be back out in the storm of sound. Perhaps, she thinks, her older sister was shepherding the younger children in. That would have been in Aamina's character, Fatima says. About the sh.e.l.l that landed then, just outside the mouth of the cave, Fatima has no memory at all. All she can say is that, after it exploded, her sister's hayaat, hayaat, or spirit, was broken, and neither of their lives was ever the same. or spirit, was broken, and neither of their lives was ever the same.

On May 27, 1999, in his bas.e.m.e.nt office, in the middle of the Montana night, Mortenson scoured the wire services for details about the fighting that had suddenly flared in Kashmir. He'd never heard of anything like it.

Ever since the violent part.i.tion that pulled India and Pakistan apart, Kashmir had been combustible. India, with its superior military force, was able to seize the majority of the former princ.i.p.ality. And though India promised to hold elections, and let Kashmiris determine their own future, the overwhelmingly Muslim population of Kashmir had never been extended that opportunity.

To the people of Pakistan, Kashmir became a symbol of all the oppression they felt Muslims had suffered as British India unraveled. And to Indians, Kashmir represented a line drawn, if not in the sand, then across a range of eighteen-thousand-foot peaks. It became the territorial jewel that the Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) fighters they branded terrorists could not be allowed to wrest from In-dia's crown. And to both sides, the line drawn over inhospitable glaciers at the behest of Britain's Lord Mountbatten remained a raw wound reminding them of their colonial humiliations.

In 1971, after decades of skirmishing, both nations agreed to a Line of Control (LOC), drawn across terrain so rugged and inhospitable that it already formed an effective barrier to military incursion. "The reports of heavy casualties shocked me," Mortenson remembers. "For most of my first six years in Pakistan, the fighting along the LOC was waged like an old-fashioned gentleman's agreement.

"The Indian and Pakistan military both built observation posts and artillery batteries way up on the glaciers. Right after their morning chai, chai, the Indians would lob a sh.e.l.l or two toward Pakistan's posts with their big Swedish-made Bofors guns. And Pakistan's forces would retort by firing off a few rounds themselves after completing morning prayer. There were few casualties, and each September, when the cold weather started rolling in, with a wink, both sides would abandon their posts until spring." the Indians would lob a sh.e.l.l or two toward Pakistan's posts with their big Swedish-made Bofors guns. And Pakistan's forces would retort by firing off a few rounds themselves after completing morning prayer. There were few casualties, and each September, when the cold weather started rolling in, with a wink, both sides would abandon their posts until spring."

But in April 1999, during an unusually early thaw, the government of Pakistan's prime minister Nawaz Sharif decided to test India's will to fight. A year earlier, Pakistan had stunned the world by conducting five successful tests of nuclear weapons. And achieving destructive parity with their Hindu neighbor provoked such an acute spike in national pride-and approval for Pakistan's government-that Sharif had a scale model of the peak in the Chagai Hills where the "Muslim Bomb" was detonated constructed next to a freeway overpa.s.s at Zero Point, the spot where 'Pindi and Islamabad intersect.

That month, about eight hundred heavily armed Islamic warriors crossed the LOC via the Gultori and took up positions along ridges inside Indian Kashmir. According to India, members of the Northern Light Infantry Brigade, the elite force a.s.signed to protect much of Pakistan's Northern Areas, put on civilian clothes and managed the invasion alongside irregular mujahadeen mujahadeen. The combined troops moved into position so stealthily that they weren't discovered for nearly a month, until Indian army spotters realized the high ridges overlooking their positions in and around the town of Kargil were all occupied by Pakistan and its allies.

Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee accused Sharif of invading India. Sharif responded that the invaders were "freedom fighters," operating independently of Pakistan's military, who had spontaneously decided to join the fight to free Kashmir's Muslims from their Hindu oppressors. Northern Light Infantry pay stubs and ID cards Indians later claimed to have found on dead soldiers insinuate a different story.

On May 26, 1999, Vajpayee ordered India's air force into action against Pakistan for the first time in more than twenty years. Wave after wave of Indian MiG and Mirage fighter jets bombed the entrenched positions. And the fighters holding the hilltops, armed with Stinger missiles the Americans had provided mujahadeen mujahadeen commanders in Afghanistan, to shoot down Soviet aircraft, blew a MiG and an MI-17 helicopter gunship out of the sky in the first days of what would come to be known as the "Kargil Conflict." commanders in Afghanistan, to shoot down Soviet aircraft, blew a MiG and an MI-17 helicopter gunship out of the sky in the first days of what would come to be known as the "Kargil Conflict."

Undeclared wars, like the American "police action" in Vietnam, as it was officially known in its early years, are all too often sanitized by their official names. "Conflict" does not begin to describe the volume of high explosives Pakistan's and India's forces fired at each other in 1999. Pakistan's forces killed hundreds of Indian soldiers and, according to India, scores of civilians caught in the crossfire. The far more powerful Indian Army fired five thousand artillery sh.e.l.ls, mortar rounds, and rockets a day.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1999, more than 250,000 Indian sh.e.l.ls, bombs, and rockets rained down on Pakistan, according to GlobalSecurity.org. Such high rates of fire hadn't afflicted any place on Earth since World War II. And though the Indian military continues to deny it, civilian accounts suggest that many of those munitions were fired indiscriminately, onto villages unlucky enough to be located along the Line of Control, villages like Fatima Batool's.

Mortenson, feeling helpless, paced his bas.e.m.e.nt between calls to his contacts in Pakistan's military. And the reports he heard robbed him of the few hours of sleep that he ordinarily managed. Streams of refugees from the fighting were crossing the high pa.s.ses on foot and approaching Skardu, exhausted, injured, and badly in need of services no one in Baltistan was equipped to provide. The answers weren't in the stacks of books piling ever higher against the walls and spilling off shelves onto the floor. They were in Pakistan.

Mortenson booked his flight.

The Deosai Plateau in mid-June is one of the most beautiful wilderness areas on the planet, Mortenson thought, as his Land Cruiser climbed toward Baltistan. Patches of purple lupines had been applied to the high meadows between mountains with broad brush strokes. Herds of big-horned bharal, bharal, thriving far from human habitation, watched the vehicle's progress with impunity. And to the west, the Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat, the greatest single unbroken pitch of rock on Earth, mesmerized Mortenson seen from this unfamiliar angle. thriving far from human habitation, watched the vehicle's progress with impunity. And to the west, the Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat, the greatest single unbroken pitch of rock on Earth, mesmerized Mortenson seen from this unfamiliar angle.

Hussein, Apo, and Faisal had arrived in Islamabad to fetch Mortenson, and Apo had convinced him to attempt the thirty-six-hour drive to Skardu over the Deosai's often-impa.s.sible roads, since the Karakoram Highway was jammed with military convoys hauling supplies to the war zone and carrying truckloads of shahids, shahids, or martyrs, home for funerals. or martyrs, home for funerals.