Stones Into Schools

by Greg Mortenson

  The search for an answer took him to a densely packed commercial district in Islamabad known as G9 and into the local offices of a Chinese company called CAC, which was based in the city of Urumqi, in Xinjiang Province. Three days after having bid farewell to the dubious headmistress of Gundi Piran, he dropped by the CAC offices and asked to see a sample of the firm’s work.

  At first glance, the Chinese design was a bit disappointing, especially compared with the kind of schools Sarfraz was used to constructing. Almost all of the CAI buildings feature impressive stonework and some aesthetic touches of design and color. By contrast, the Chinese earthquake-proof buildings appeared ugly and utilitarian. They also had a prefab look that made them seem, on the surface, rather flimsy. Even Sarfraz had to concede, however, that the science behind the design was impressive. The buildings were put together on principles that western Chinese designers had identified more than fifty years earlier, working with wooden structures whose pieces fit together like a loosely jointed log cabin. The detached fittings gave the frames a built-in “play,” which enabled them to disperse seismic forces by shaking and rattling without collapsing. They were engineered to withstand magnitude-8.2 earthquakes, and the Chinese were prepared to offer a twenty-year guarantee.

  Impressed, Sarfraz concluded that the design would have met with my approval had he bothered to pick up the sat phone and pass this information along to me—which, of course, it was impossible to do without revealing that he had gone “off protocol” and was no longer home in Zuudkhan. So instead, he gulped and moved on to the next stage.

  Did the Chinese think that the school yard in Gundi Piran offered a suitable building site?

  Perhaps, replied the Chinese engineers, but they would need to see some photographs.

  No way, retorted Sarfraz. The safety of the people who would be using these buildings could not be entrusted to photographs. If the Chinese were serious about wanting to do business, they would need to get into the red Land Cruiser—right now—and make the trip to Azad Kashmir.

  During the following three days, Sarfraz and a trio of Chinese engineers toured three possible building sites in the Neelum Valley, including Nouseri, Pakrat, and Gundi Piran—where, despite the fact that Sarfraz had brought along tea and biscuits, the visitors failed to make a dent in Saida Shabir’s skepticism.

  “Don’t worry, I will have the firm commitment shortly!” he assured her as they left.

  “Inshallah,” she replied. “But if you want to come back here again, you better have some building materials with you.”

  As they toured the sites, the Chinese engineers explained to Sarfraz that the aluminum frames for the school buildings would need to be prefabricated to the required dimensions in Urumqi, then hauled in trucks over the 15,397-foot Khunjarab Pass, then down to Islamabad and over to Azad Kashmir. There, the company’s own crew would bolt the structure into place on a special concrete foundation that floated on a bed of crushed rock and Styrofoam, which would help to dampen the seismic shock waves. Fair enough, replied Sarfraz.

  Back in Islamabad, Sarfraz told the Chinese he’d be in touch, then set about confirming everything he’d been told. He checked in with several engineers serving in the Pakistani army who were familiar with earthquake-proof construction techniques and then ran those findings past another set of engineers working with the American military in Azad Kashmir. He also hauled out his laptop and pored over several Web sites with dense reports on earthquake-resistant design. When it all checked out, he returned to the Chinese.

  “Okay, we are ready to start,” announced Sarfraz.

  “We don’t start anything without money,” replied Yanjing, the head engineer, as he handed over an estimate of the total cost for three schools.

  Now it was time for Sarfraz to sit down and put together a memo addressed to me.

  Even though August 13 was a Sunday, I was, as usual, sitting down at my desk in the basement to start my day at 5:00 A.M., when the fax machine bleated and a document started scrolling through:

  I am very sorry sir, but I need a wire transfer of $54,000 for three schools in Azad Kashmir—Pakrat, Nouseri, and Patika. . . .

  The memo, which was three pages long, included sample drawings and a budget for bolts, rebar, sheet metal, and hammers. It ended with a typically direct suggestion from Sarfraz.

  Please discuss with CAI board and send funds immediately.

  This was the moment I first became aware that the Central Asia Institute was apparently ready to leap into the business of building earthquake-proof school buildings.

  My first reaction, it must be said, was one of surprise and some annoyance. Given Sarfraz’s previous recommendations about the wisdom of holding back on constructing permanent buildings until the population of Azad Kashmir had stopped moving around and the situation had stabilized somewhat, I had assumed that we would be running our tent schools for quite some time, perhaps even years. I had also assumed that we would wait for the provincial government of Azad Kashmir to take the lead on developing a new earthquake-resistant building code and then follow suit. The idea that we might decide to spearhead this initiative on our own during a time when our personnel and our resources were already sorely overtaxed had, quite frankly, never occurred to me. So what in the world was Sarfraz talking about in this memo?

  I was about to pick up the phone and put this question to him, but it was already ringing.

  “Did you get my fax?” he demanded.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Let’s start with the fact that you’re not in Zuudkhan sitting under a tree tending your goats.”

  Sarfraz had no interest in exploring that topic and steamrollered directly into the issue at hand. Nearly a year had passed since the earthquake occurred, he declared, and the people of Azad Kashmir—especially those who lived in the Neelum Valley—needed to see something real happening, not just a couple dozen tent schools. Moreover, the few permanent government school buildings that had been reconstructed were inappropriate, having been raised directly over the footprints of the old schools, and with the same techniques that were responsible for the structural failures that had killed so many children. This was no way to proceed because the next time an earthquake occurred, even more kids would die. What was needed—immediately—was for someone to demonstrate to the government that safer schools could be built for the right cost. Since no one else had stepped up, we had no choice but to take on this responsibility ourselves.

  “That may all be true, Sarfraz, but you know that the board of the Central Asia Institute has to approve all of our expenditures, and the budget for 2006 has already been allocated.”

  “Yes. That is why you must convince them to make a special exception. This is a problem you can solve.”

  “But Sarfraz, the board doesn’t even meet again for another two months. Even if I could convince them, this can’t happen until October.”

  “We cannot wait until October. Winter will be here soon. Please call them now and get approval over the phone.”

  “Sarfraz, let me explain something—”

  “Sir!” he interjected. “I made a promise to a madam who is principal of a school. You always tell us that we must listen to find out what people truly want. Well, okay. I listened, I found out, and then I made a promise. If we don’t keep our word, she will never believe us again.”

  Sigh.

  “So you will send the goat today?”

  Sarfraz and the rest of the Dirty Dozen have a habit of referring to any funds that are wired from the United States as “the goat”—a nod to Haji Ali, the chief of Korphe, who had been forced in 1996 to give a dozen of his prized rams to a rival tribal chief in exchange for Korphe being accorded the honor of having the first school at the upper end of the Braldu Valley.

  As it happened, we still had $75,000 left in our special $160,000 earthquake-relief fund, and all we needed was the board’s approval. Even so, the idea of committing the bulk of what we had left to some fancy technology brought into P
akistan from western China seemed risky. The Red Cross had by now set up a big base right across the Neelum River from Patika, so everybody up and down the river would be watching. If this project backfired in some way, not only our finances but also our credibility would suffer. And finally, there was the calendar.

  “It’s already September, Sarfraz,” I moaned. “You know as well as I do that nobody starts building anything in the mountains in September.”

  “No problem, sir. It is not too late.”

  (In fact, he went on to point out, his calculations indicated that we could finish all three projects within one month.)

  “Well, okay, what about customs and everything having to come in from China? Have you thought about that?”

  “No problem, sir. Everything has been arranged.”

  (He had already confirmed that the Chinese had their customs paperwork in perfect order. The trucks from China would be off-loaded at the customs station about an hour inside the border, where the Pakistani truckers would take over. Six or seven truckloads would be sufficient for all three schools.)

  “Start to finish, one month, sir,” declared Sarfraz. “I promise.”

  Still I was reluctant. The whole scheme seemed to be unfolding much too quickly. Maybe Sarfraz’s energy and enthusiasm had finally gotten the best of him and affected his judgment.

  “Sarfraz, for me to even consider agreeing to this, first I’d have to research this technology for myself, and then I’d have to talk to the board, and then . . . ”

  “No problem, sir,” he interrupted. “Call me when you have made your decision. I am waiting by the phone.”

  Then he hung up.

  Five minutes later, he sent me another fax, this one a sheaf of pages with budgets, contracts, and engineering specifications. I peeled off the schematics and drove over to Montana State University, just a few blocks away, to run them past Brett Gunnink, the head of the civil engineering department. Brett was impressed and confirmed that the design was sound. Then I began calling the board members and walked each of them through the arguments: The people needed hope; we had the money; a new standard of safe school construction needed to be set.

  Fair enough, said the board members. Let’s do it.

  Time to call Sarfraz.

  “Sarfraz, you realize that if this doesn’t work out, we’ll lose credibility and our reputation will be hatam (finished) in Azad Kashmir?” I told him when I phoned back with the news. “You understand how important this is, don’t you?”

  “No problem, sir, the U.S. Army Chinooks are ready to fly the loads into the Neelum Valley tomorrow. So you will send the goat today?”

  “Inshallah, Sarfraz, I will send the goat today.”

  The last of the many aspects of this enterprise on which Sarfraz had kept me in the dark was the fact that he had already set his machinery in motion on the assumption that I would say yes to the proposal. Word had been sent to the Wakhan, and a squadron of his most trusted masons from the Charpurson Valley had dashed back across the Irshad Pass, raced down the Karakoram Highway, and were now in Muzaffarabad waiting to assist the Chinese, who had been put on standby.

  I wired the money to Pakistan, and work started immediately. I learned later that the atmosphere at each job site was cheery to the point of being almost jubilant. This was one of the first enterprises in the region that conveyed the feeling that what was being raised up might actually be better than what had been destroyed. As a result, the mood among the men who built those schools, Pakistani and Chinese alike, was unlike anything the Neelum Valley had seen in more than a year. They laughed, they joked, they sang at night—and to a man, they worked like demons.

  Nineteen days later, all three schools—Pakrat, Nouseri, and Patika—were finished.

  The pictures Sarfraz took of the new structures were uploaded a day or two later and e-mailed to my account. I looked them over with Tara, Khyber, and Amira. The school in Pakrat was tucked into the side of a steep hill, and a beaming girl in a colorful dupatta stood by the door. In Nouseri, they had created a six-room structure, and each of the photographs offered proof of Farzana’s desks. It was the pictures from Gundi Piran, however, that we found most arresting.

  At Saida Shabir’s school, the structure that Sarfraz had created was a 162-foot-long, one-story building containing twelve classrooms that was painted white and neatly highlighted with red trim. About fifty feet away and facing the school was an open-air veranda, supported by steel posts and covered by a metal roof. Here, girls who were still too traumatized by the morning of October 8, 2005, could sit at their desks and attend classes without fear of being trapped inside.

  Directly in the center of the veranda’s cement floor, the construction team had left a rectangular patch of open ground. This was where the seven girls whose bodies were never claimed had been buried. Separated from their families and their loved ones, they now lay together in a neat row. Each grave was marked by a modest stone, and all of them rested with their heads toward the blackboard.

  The reason for this design was beautifully clear to anyone who might step into the open-air classroom. If any grace or redemption can be said to reside in the words of a teacher who is imparting the gift of literacy, then that benediction will now pass directly over the graves of those lost little girls every day that the Gundi Piran school is in session.

  Later that night, after my wife and children had fallen asleep, I went back down to the basement and pulled the photos up on my computer to marvel again at what had been achieved. As I scrolled through the images, I couldn’t help thinking back to my father and the fulfillment of the prediction he’d made in the summer of 1971 when he inaugurated the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre with the declaration that within a decade, the head of every department in that hospital would be a local from Tanzania.

  It was then that it occurred to me that without quite intending to follow in my dad’s footsteps, I was now watching something no less marvelous unfold in Kashmir.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Chance That Must Be Taken

  History is a race between education and catastrophe.

  —H. G. WELLS

  Refugees leaving Pakrat village after Pakistan earthquake

  On November 1, 2006, just five weeks after the new earthquake-proof schools were completed, Prince Charles and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, arrived in Islamabad for a five-day goodwill tour. During this trip, their first visit to Pakistan, the royal couple was scheduled to spend about three hours conducting a review of several reconstruction projects in Patika. Part of the purpose behind the stopover was to return global media attention to the continuing plight of the earthquake victims in Azad Kashmir and to underscore how much work remained to be done. The plan called for the royal couple to drop by a health-care facility built by the International Committee of the Red Cross, a German veterinary center that had given away nearly 1,500 milk cows to local residents, and the brand-new Gundi Piran girls’ school.

  Prior to the event, Shaukat Ali, who had helped to spearhead the effort to reopen classes at the school the previous November, was interviewed and vetted by personnel from the British embassy, then prepped on greeting the royal couple when they arrived at the Gundi Piran school. For the occasion he wore a snow white shalwar kamiz and polished black shoes. With his round gold-rimmed glasses and his mujahadeen-style beard, he cut quite a figure.

  Security was tight throughout the royal visit, with British bodyguards shadowing the couple’s every move. Each major road within Patika was closed down early in the morning, and around 10:00 A.M. a Royal Navy helicopter, accompanied by a pair of Pakistani Mi-17 military choppers, touched down at the supply depot near the center of town. The prince and the duchess stepped out in matching cream outfits, and after walking through Patika’s bazaar, where children welcomed them with Union Jack flags, applause, and waves, they walked to the Red Cross hospital and then proceeded to the Gundi Piran school.

  Shaukat Ali presented the duchess with a pas
hmina Kashmiri shawl, which he placed around her shoulders. Saida Shabir greeted the royal couple with tea and biscuits, and two girls handed them bouquets. After greeting the teachers, the prince and the duchess paid visits to several different classrooms and spent a few minutes at the graves of the girls whose bodies had never been claimed. Then something odd happened.

  Turning to Shaukat Ali, the prince asked who was responsible for rebuilding the school. Without missing a beat, Shaukat Ali declared that credit went to two organizations: the Aga Khan Foundation—an Ismaili NGO that does excellent work in Muslim communities throughout Asia—and a construction company from China. The Central Asia Institute was never mentioned.

  This struck the CAI staff as rather strange, and after the royal couple had departed, several of them approached Shaukat Ali and demanded that he explain himself. Flustered by the anger and the hurt he had caused, he protested that he had been confused about the CAI’s role in the reconstruction of the school—confusion that was exacerbated by the fact that, unlike most NGOs, we had failed to advertise our accomplishment by putting up a large billboard with our name in front of the building when it was completed.

  He had a point about the billboard—a detail that had somehow slipped through the cracks during the rush to finish the building. Moreover, the remorse he expressed over his faux pas seemed genuine and quite sincere. What struck me most forcefully, however, was a comment that Shaukat Ali later made to a visiting American journalist, who shared the remarks with me.

  “You know, I think that what the Central Asia Institute has done here is a small kind of miracle,” he said. “Without help from anybody else, and without differentiating on the basis of religion, tribe, or politics, this organization has changed the minds of the people who live in this area, 70 to 80 percent of whom are conservative Muslims. Before the earthquake occurred, many of these people were thinking that the American people are not good. But the CAI has proved that this is not true—and now the people here are paying much respect, much honor, to this organization.”