Three Cups of Tea

"Right. Having lived in Pakistan, a lot of what is written resonates with my experience there – one that people who haven’t lived in Pakistan often find it hard to understand. When I tell them I lived there with my children, who are now two and four, they say; ‘How could you do that?’ as though everybody there is a Kalashnikov-wielding fanatic. Before we left I took the children up to the Himalayas and it was a lovely journey, hiking. At the high altitude I found it hard to carry Sophia, my younger daughter, so the tribesmen would come and carry her for me. The people are welcoming and friendly, and I laughed out loud when I read Mortenson’s line that if he was killed in Pakistan, he knew it would be in a car accident and not by a terrorist. Americans often said to me, “Aren’t you afraid about living in Pakistan?” And I’d answer, “Yes, you should see how they drive.” But in other ways it was completely safe. I lived in Islamabad and when we left, and I’d packed up the house, it took me half an hour to find the house keys to return to the landlord because I’d never used them. He builds schools in the mountain areas of the Himalayas and he is now working in Northern Afghanistan, primarily building schools for girls. Contrary to popular belief, I found that Afghan and Pakistani parents do want to educate their girls, but only as long as it’s safe. His book has been a bestseller in the US, and several books from the region, like The Kite Runner, have really captured public attention. I think people are intrigued by Afghanistan and Pakistan. Post 9/11 I think a lot of Americans thought people in these areas were all savage fanatics and these books are perhaps beginning to change that perception. In the mountain areas, the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, there is a saying that when you meet someone you drink three cups of te the first when you are still strangers; by the second you are friends, and by the third you are family. It is striking the way you are welcomed into people’s homes and lives if you make the effort to travel to see them. It is a very friendly part of the world. I went to a refugee camp after 9/11 where people were living in tents and boiling grass to make tea and at least one family offered to let me sleep in their tent. Obviously, not everybody is nice. They have their problems…but my overall experience was very welcoming."

"Probably everyone at this point has read Greg Mortenson’s book. I admire it for a couple of reasons. One is that there is a lot of real antipathy and hostility toward Islam these days and I think Greg does a very good job of providing a more nuanced portrait of the Islamic world and what is possible in it. Also, there has been a tendency to try to address violence in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan with more violence – and I’m a big believer that education is the most transformative way we can intervene. And that is exactly what Greg has done. I wish we would learn from some of his experiences in Pakistan and Afghanistan. If they’re in finance, one of the huge needs for the developing world is building up microsaving capacity, ie, figuring out systems to let people save money in areas that banks don’t reach. One mechanism, for example, is to let people save money on their cellphone, to use cellphones as a kind of alternative banking system. There are a lot of creative ways being worked out now on how to promote microsavings, and, to some degree, microfinance . So that would be a case where someone from Wall Street could bring their background and apply it. The Gates Foundation is pumping money into microsavings – as are a lot of people. So that’s what I would do, I would look into that sphere."

"Three Cups of Tea – I felt incredibly daunted when I read this book. When you’re writing a memoir, you’re put in the awkward position of being in the story and not wanting to come off as narcissistic and yet you must think your story’s interesting or you wouldn’t be writing a book about it. But the thing is that while my reporters changed my life and I hope I changed theirs, there were about 16 of them, and Greg Mortenson has changed literally thousands and thousands of lives. Well, he had a failed attempt to climb K2 back in the early 90s and when he was wandering down the mountain he got lost and wound up in this little place called Korphe, a village, and the people took him in and helped him get his strength back. And while he was there he watched the children at school, except they didn’t have a schoolhouse so they knelt on the ground outside, often in the snow, and drew in that or the mud. So these villagers said they wanted a school and he promised he would come back and give them one. So he goes to the US and launches a fund-raising crusade, and he gets his money, but now he needs to get together the materials, transport them to this very remote location in Pakistan and get the thing put together. There’s bargaining, there’s this very tricky region, there’s stuff that’s stolen along the way, and it takes ages to build the school, but it does get built, and after that he builds dozens of other schools, especially schools for girls, who haven’t had much of a chance for education in Pakistan. It’s the most incredible story. He gets kidnapped in Waziristan, in the northwest, where he had no real contacts, and that taught him that schools only get built where you’ve got contacts, because otherwise you’re in big trouble. There’s a fatwa against him at one point, but he gets a letter from one of the highest imams in the country saying the fatwa’s nonsense. He keeps persevering. He learns Urdu, he becomes obsessed – he comes across as a Christ-like figure really, though he’s always late for things… The writer, David Oliver Relin, admits that he’s not an objective observer, he’s very in favour, and it is a mission. It feels like a religious devotion and it made me feel that my story was very, very small in comparison. But that really is the sort of thing that Yemen needs. I mean we’re just as in danger of uneducated people falling into the hands of terrorists, people with no jobs and no schooling. This book explains why this is a better way to fight terrorism than the military. This is how you fight it: by widening people’s horizons, not with planes and bombs."