That Should Be A Movie: Three Cups of Tea

A Lost Mountain Climber Finds a Need to Meet and Ultimately Becomes a Leading Warrior of Peace in The War on Terror.

Now That Should Be A Movie.

Hello and thank you for visiting That Should Be A Movie. I’m C. W. Johnson, Jr. Today’s book I would like to pitch for a movie is Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations…One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, from Viking Press.

The story begins in September 1993 when Greg Mortenson has become lost in the beauty of the Karakoram mountains of Pakistan. He had planned to summit K2, one of the world’s most difficult climbs and second tallest peak but failed after a member of the climbing party became ill. Facing failure for the first time in his life was doubly humiliating for Greg since he had planned to honor his deceased sister, Christa, who had recently died of acute meningitis, by placing her necklace on the summit. Lost in the awe-inspiring mountains he stumbled into the village of Korphe.

In Korphe he was greeted by the village elder Haji Ali. He was very impressed with the hospitality of the villagers, who gave him tea and their best yak blankets. He noticed many other things about Korphe. Being an EMT, he noticed every household had someone suffering from goiters or cataracts. Many of the children, who trailed him around the village, suffered from malnutrition. He used his EMT skills to treat these conditions, earning him the nickname “Dr. Greg.” One thing he also noticed about the children was that they had no school building. Instead, they studied in the open air, kneeling in rocks and snow as they were assailed by cold winds. Greg learned from Haji Ali that Korphe was so physically and culturally isolated from the government in Islamabad that promised funds often did not arrive. After helping meet some of the immediate physical needs of the villagers, Greg promises Haji Ali that he will return and build a school.

Back in America, Greg is at a loss for how to keep his promise. After the difficulty of writing five hundred letters by hand on a typewriter, he receives only one check. He doesn’t even have a physical address or a name for his project. The most help he gets is from the owner of a Lazer Image store, Kishwar Syed, who is a Pakistani whose village once didn’t have a school either. Syed gave Greg a series of free trials until his friend was computer literate. Greg’s mother was a school teacher and her students helped him raise funds with their campaign Pennies for Pakistan. He finally gets support from Dr. Jean Hoerni, a blunt physicist who had built a half dozen companies. Hoerni was also a mountain climber who had visited the Karakoram area. He gives Greg the $12,000 needed to build the Korphe school and tells him, “Don’t screw up.”

Eventually, Greg decides he will bring schools to all the villages in the neglected regions of northern Pakistan. This occurred after a frustrating experience in which he could not get his supplies from his local guide Changazi. Instead of taking Greg to the village he promised to build a school for, Korphe, Changazi took him to his village, Kuardu. During dinner with the elders, Changazi tried to convince Greg to build the school for Kuardu instead. In a rage Greg violated custom by leaving the meal, stepping over the food in the presence of the elders, and storming outside of the village where he threw himself on the ground and started crying. He soon found himself surrounded by children. Coming to his senses, he introduced himself to the children by saying “I am Greg. I am good. What is your name.” By the time Changazi found him, he was teaching the children multiplication by using a branch to draw in the dirt. As Greg drove away from the village, he decided he would treat all the people in the Baltistan region equally and the schools would not be to enrich headmen. To do this he would create the Central Asia Institute (CAI), which would use local materials and labor. The reach of CAI would eventually reach beyond the Baltistan region, building schools in the war-torn country of Afghanistan, whose last king Greg met by accident on an airplane and promised he was not going to abandon the country like so many before him.

Greg’s plan was inspired by his father, Irvin “Dempsey” Mortenson. Mr. Mortenson had been a medical Lutheran missionary and teacher in Tanzania, where Greg grew up and fell in love with mountaineering after climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. The elder Mortenson turned heads when he insisted on turning a hospital over to local villagers instead of the children of expatriates and government elites. He believed that instead of telling local people, “Look what we’ve done for you,” he should say “Look what you’ve done for yourselves and how much more you can do.” Greg tried to follow his father’s example, respecting local customs and traditions. Sometimes he learns the hard way, like the time he was kidnapped and held hostage for several days by locals suspicious of outsiders who hadn’t properly established a relationship.

He made many sacrifices back in America. He often worked the night shift in some of the most undesirable hospital wards, such as trauma and burn units. He lived frugally, often sleeping out of his car. Along the way, he loses jobs and a girlfriend. His passion for mountain climbing waned as Korphe dominated his conversations. His health suffered as he lost his mountaineer physic due to weight gain. At one point he was mugged by two youths who were disappointed to find all he had on him were two dollars. Still, Greg did not give up his promise to the people of Korphe.

There were many obstacles Greg had to overcome to build the schools, especially the one in Korphe. The roads were primitive, often on the edge of sheer cliffs, and could easily be stopped by boulders and avalanches as well as rock and mudslides. Bridges could be washed out. At one point he was even stopped by guerrillas demanding that the Pakistani government turn over a government contractor, so they could hang him for embezzling funds meant for their area’s infrastructure (the government in Islamabad gave them the money instead). Even after bringing the supplies that had not been stolen all the way up to Korphe, he had to wait until he had raised funds and collected materials to build a bridge across the Braldu River. Not only does this bridge ensure that the school is built, but it empowers the Balti women, allowing them to travel freely.

One of the biggest challenges to overcome was the opposition of Islamic fundamentalists to education for girls. There was Haji Mehedi, a Nurmadhar who runs his village like a mafia boss. He accuses Greg of poisoning the children with Western teachings and demands that Haji Ali pay him twelve of the village’s best rams, a price Haji Ali willingly pays to ensure the children’s education. Another local sher declares a fatwa, a religious ruling against Greg because of the education of girls. In northern Pakistan the local mullahs and shariat law had just as much authority as the Pakistani government. A red velvet box arrived containing the ruling of the highest mufti in Iran that overruled the fatwa, but Greg still faces opposition from local mullahs. At one point thugs attacked a coed school, trying to set it on fire, then swinging sledgehammers to knock down the brick walls. Another mullah destroyed bricks meant for a school. A Shariat Court declared the mullah’s fatwa illegitimate and ordered him to pay CAI eight hundred dollars to cover the damages. Later a Pakistani military commander was flying with Greg in a helicopter and asked him to point out the mullah’s house. Greg pointed out the imposing house, which the commander buzzed to give the mullah something else about which to think. Not too long after that Pakistani military helicopters would fly through the same valley to fight radical Muslims further north who were also opposed to female education.

One comical incident of opposition came when a local wanted to be a watchman at a school.  he locked the doors and refused to let anyone in. That was until a grandfather of two students threatened to blow the school and him up with dynamite.

Greg also faced opposition from his fellow Americans. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, he began receiving hate mail calling him a traitor and wishing him a painful death. One letter read “Our Lord will see that you pay dearly for being a traitor…soon you will suffer more excruciating pain than our brave soldiers.” He saw a bumper sticker on the cab of a Ford F150 in his home base of Bozeman, Montana that read “Nuke ‘Em All – Let Allah Sort Them Out.” Receiving hate he would have expected from ignorant village mullahs made him want to give up. Yet other Americans still supported Greg, such as author Jon Krakauer (who would later turn on Greg), believing that if the CAI was not working in that area of Pakistan, people would be shouting “We Hate America.”

While Greg, an Army veteran, supported the war in Afghanistan, he was openly critical of many of the ways the military was not respecting the culture and traditions of the locals. He had been concerned with the flight of refugees from the Taliban for years, trying to get the media and UN to pay attention to the indifference and even hostility shown to the refugees by surrounding countries. “In times of war, you often hear leaders – Christian, Jewish, and Muslim – saying, ‘God is on our side.’ But that isn’t true. In war, God is on the side of refugees, widows, and orphans,” he would say. As the war progressed, he became more urgent in exhorting the military not to disregard local worldviews and needs, especially when it came to calling civilian deaths “collateral damage.” “People in that part of the world are use to death and violence,” Greg would testify before members of the US government. “…But the worse thing you can do is what we’re doing – ignoring the victims. Calling them ‘collateral damage’ and not even try to count the numbers of the dead. Because to ignore them is to deny they even existed, and there is no greater insult in the Islamic world. For that, we will never be forgiven.” He refused a covert million-dollar donation from the government for fear it would endanger his reputation among the locals. Instead, he receives support from private Americans who believe that Greg’s work is just another front in The War on Terror.

This is due to Madrassa, an Islamic religious school in the region. Many of the madrassas and mosques being built in Pakistan were supported by the seemingly unlimited funds of the Wahhabi sect out of Saudi Arabia. They would teach an ultra-conservative, ultra-fundamentalist Islamic curriculum that brainwashed young boys into hating women, Jews, and Americans. Terry Richard of the Oregonian wrote that rural Pakistan was a breeding ground for terrorists where illiterate young boys often end up in terrorist camps. By increasing literacy, tensions can be reduced. The 9/11 Commission made a connection between the Taliban and one of the Saudi groups supporting the Madrassas. One madrassa earned the nickname University of Jehad. While not all Madrassas are hotbeds of extremism, there are thousands in Pakistan filling in the void left by the country’s dysfunctional education system. Because of the Khyper Pass, many of the Madrassas’ graduates have easy access to Afghanistan. Greg would tell a newspaper reporter looking for news out of Afghanistan in the early days of the war that the key to defeating terrorism is education. He would later testify before Congress that he had learned that terror doesn’t occur because some group simply decides to hate another. “It happens because children are not being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death.” Fellow mountaineer, Charlie Shimanski, believes that Greg will one day win The Nobel Peace Prize for battling with the real causes of terrorism in a way that is every bit as heroic as the firemen rushing into the Twin Towers. Greg’s pioneering fight against poverty and illiteracy makes him a real American hero.

In this fight, Greg is surrounded by a host of fascinating characters. Haji Ali, the wise village leader who teaches Greg to slow down and respect the ways of the Balti. “The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die,” he told him, encouraging him to let the people of Korphe build the school at their own pace. The conservative mullah Sher Takhi who helped carried building supplies despite having a limp. The ornery Dr. Jean Hoerni who demanded to see a picture of the Korphe school before he died of cancer. Greg’s eventual wife, Tara Bishop, who builds a community center for the women of Korphe. Mary Bono, the young Republican representative of Palm Springs, California who Greg met by accident at the exclusive Yellowstone Club. Abdul Shah, who teaches Greg how to shop for construction supplies. Jahan, the headstrong girl who became the first educated woman in the Baldru Valley. And a host of religious and civil leaders and private Pakistanis and Afghans who support the education of the boys and girls of Central Asia. Some of these supporters have even crossed over and become friends with members of hostile tribes and sects to achieve the common goal of children’s education. As of this date, over 60 schools have been built in the remotest parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A movie based on Three Cups of Tea would be inspiring, heartwarming, motivating, and thought-provoking all at the same time. It would help create peace and understanding between the people of America and Central Asia. The book is written intimately, focusing on small sights and sounds which creates a picture that puts you right in the events. As such I could see Terry George, Marc Foster, Ron Howard, Angelina Jolie, Emilio Estevez, Werner Herzog, Roland Joffé, Steven McQueen, James Gray or Peter Weir directing. Since Greg’s story is a spiritual journey, perhaps a miniseries on a streaming service like Netflix or Amazon could best capture the pace and atmosphere necessary in its telling.

Because it is a heartwarming and inspiring story of one man’s peaceful fight for education in a world of war, I believe that Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin should be a movie.

Note: Some have called into question Mortenson’s sincerity and character. Here are two articles for you to research and decide for yourselves.

“Greg Mortenson, Disgraced Author of Three Cups of Tea, Believes He Will Have the Last Laugh” by Jon Krakauer

“Did Greg Mortenson Get The Shaft” by
Jennifer Dobner

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