Lesson 8 Three Cups of Tea(课文原文)

Lesson 8 Three Cups of Tea(课文原文) Lesson 8 Three Cups of Tea(Excerpts) CHAPTER 12 HAJI ALI’S LESSON It may seem absurd to believe that a “primitive” culture in the Himalaya has anything to teach our industrialized society. But our search for a future that works keeps spiraling back to an ancient connection between ourselves and the earth, an interconnectedness that ancient cultures have never abandoned. —Helena Norberg-Hodge The rocks looked more like an ancient ruin than the building blocks of a new school. Though he stood on a plateau high above the Braldu River, in perfect fall weather that made the pyramid of Korphe K2 bristle, Mortenson was disheartened by the prospect before him. The previous winter, before leaving Korphe, Mortenson had driven tent pegs into the frozen soil and tied red and blue braided nylon cord to them, marking out a floor plan of five rooms he imagined for the school. He?d left Haji Ali enough cash to hire laborers from villages downriver to help quarry and carry the stone. And when he arrived, he expected to find at least a foundation for the school excavated. Instead, he saw two mounds of stones standing in a field. Inspecting the site with Haji Ali, Mortenson struggled to hide his disappointment. Between his four trips to the airport with his wife, and his tussle to reclaim his building materials, he had arrived here in mid-October, nearly a month after he?d told Haji Ali to expect him. They should be building the walls this week, he thought. Mortenson turned his anger inward, blaming himself. He couldn?t keep returning to Pakistan forever. Now that he was married, he needed a career. He wanted to get the school finished so he could set about figuring out what his life?s work would be. And now winter would delay construction once again. Mortenson kicked a stone angrily. “What?s the matter,” Haji Ali said in Balti. “You look like the young ram at the time of butting.” Mortenson took a deep breath. “Why haven?t you started?” he asked. “Doctor Greg, we discussed your plan after you returned to your village,” Haji Ali said. “And we decided it was foolish to waste your money paying the lazy men of Munjung and Askole. They know the school is being built by a rich foreigner, so they will work little and argue much. So we cut the stones ourselves. It took all summer, because many of the men had to leave for porter work. But don?t worry. I have your money locked safely in my home.” “I?m not worried about the money.” Mortenson said. “But I wanted to get a roof up before winter so the children would have some place to study.” Haji Ali put his hand on Mortenson?s shoulder, and gave his impa-tient American a fatherly squeeze. “I thank all-merciful Allah for all you have done. But the people of Korphe have been here without a school for six hundred years,” he said, smiling. “What is one winter more?” That night, lying under the stars on Haji Ali?s roof next to Twaha, Mortenson thought of how lonely he?d been the last time he?d slept on this spot. He pictured Tara, remembering the lovely way she had waved at him through the glass at SFO, and a bubble of happiness rose up so forcefully that he couldn?t keep it to himself. Twaha, you awake?” Mortenson asked. “ “Yes, awake.” “I have something to tell you. I got married.” Mortenson heard a click, then squinted into the beam of the flash-light he?d just brought from America for his friend. Twaha sat up next to him, studying his face under the novel electric light to see if he was joking. Then the flashlight fell to the ground and Mortenson felt a sharp flurry of fists pummeling his arms and shoulders in congratulations. Twaha collapsed on his pile of bedding with a happy sigh. “Haji Ali say Doctor Greg look different this time,” Twaha said, laughing. “He really know everything.” He switched the flashlight experimentally off and on. “Can I know her good name?” “Tara.” “Ta... ra,” Twaha said, weighing the name, the Urdu word for star, on his tongue. “She is lovely, your Tara?” “Yes,” Mortenson said, feeling himself blush. “Lovely.” “How many goat and ram you must give her father?” Twaha asked. Her father is dead, like mine,” Mortenson said. “And in America, we don?t pay “ a bride price.” “Did she cry when she left her mother?” “She only told her mother about me after we were married.” Twaha fell silent for a moment, considering the exotic matrimonial customs of Americans. ***************************************************** The next morning, Mortenson found a precious boiled egg on his plate, next to his usual breakfast of chapatti and lassi. Sakina grinned proudly at him from the doorway to her kitchen. Haji Ali peeled the egg for Mortenson and explained. “So you?ll be strong enough to make many children,” he said, while Sakina giggled behind her shawl. Haji Ali sat patiently at his side until Mortenson finished a second cup of milk tea. A grin smoldered, then ignited at the center of his thick beard. “Let?s go build a school,” he said. Haji Ali climbed to his roof and called for all the men of Korphe to assemble at the local mosque. Mortenson, carrying five shovels he had recovered from Changazi?s derelict hotel, followed Haji Ali down muddy alleys toward the mosque, as men streamed out of every doorway. Korphe?s mosque had adapted to a changing environment over the centuries, much like the people who filled it with their faith. The Balti, lacking a written language, compensated by passing down exacting oral history. Every Balti could recite their ancestry, stretching back ten to twenty generations. And everyone in Korphe knew the legend of this listing wooden building buttressed with earthern walls. It had stood for nearly five hundred years, and had served as a Buddhist tem?ple before Islam had established a foothold in Baltistan. For the first time since he?d arrived in Korphe, Mortenson stepped through the gate and set foot inside. During his visits he had kept respectful distance from the mosque, and Korphe?s religious leader, Sher Takhi. Mortenson was unsure how the mullah felt about having an infidel in the village, an infidel who proposed to educate Korphe?s girls. Sher Takhi smiled at Mortenson and led him to a prayer mat at the rear of the room. He was thin and his beard was peppered with gray. Like most Balti living in the mountains, he looked decades older than his forty-odd years. Sher Takhi, who called Korphe?s widely dispersed faithful to prayer five times a day without the benefit of amplification, filled the small room with his booming voice. He led the men in a special dua, asking Allah?s blessing and guidance as they began work on the school. Mortenson prayed as the tailor had taught him, folding his arms and bending at the waist. ************************************************ Haji Ali provided the string this time. It was locally woven twine, not blue and red braided cord. With Mortenson, he measured out the correct lengths, dipped the twine in a mixture of calcium and lime, then used the village?s time-tested method to mark the dimensions of a construction site. Haji Ali and Twaha pulled the cord taut and whipped it against the ground, leaving white lines on the packed earth where the walls of the school would stand. Mortenson passed out the five shovels and he and fifty other men took turns digging steadily all afternoon until they had hollowed out a trench, three feet wide and three feet deep, around the school?s perimeter. When the trench was done, Haji Ali nodded toward two large stones that had been carved for this purpose, and six men lifted them, shuffled agonizingly toward the trench, and lowered them into the corner of the foundation facing Korphe K2. Then he called for the chogo rabak. Twaha strode seriously away and returned with a massive ash-colored animal with nobly curving horns. “Usually you have to drag a ram to make it move,” Mortenson says. “But this was the village?s number-one ram. It was so big that it was dragging Twaha, who was doing his best just to hold on as the animal led him to its own execution.” Twaha halted the rabak over the cornerstone and grasped its horns. Gently, he turned the animal?s head toward Mecca as Sher Takhi chanted the story of Allah asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, before allowing him to substitute a ram after he passed his test of loyalty. In the Koran, the story appears in much the same manner as the covenant of Abraham and Isaac does in the Torah and the Bible. “Watching this scene straight out of the Bible stories I?d learned in Sunday school,” Mortenson says, “I thought how much the different faiths had in common, how you could trace so many of their traditions back to the same root.” Hussain, an accomplished climbing porter with the build of a Balti-sized sumo wrestler, served as the village executioner. Baltoro porters were paid per twenty-five-kilogram load. Hussain was famous for hauling triple loads on expeditions, never carrying fewer than seventy kilograms, or nearly 150 pounds, at a time. He drew a sixteen-inch knife from its sheath and laid it lightly against the hair bristling on the ram?s throat. Sher Takhi raised his hands, palms up, over the rabak?s head and requested Allah’s permission to take its life. Then he nodded to the man holding the quivering knife. The women prepared rice and dal while the men skinned and butchered the ram. “We didn?t get anything else done that day,” Mortenson says. “In fact we hardly got anything else done that fall. Haji Ali was in a hurry to sanctify the school, but not to build it. We just had a massive feast. For people who may only get meat a few times a year, that meal was a much more serious business than a school.” Every resident of Korphe got a share of the meat. After the last bone had been beaten and the last strip of marrow sucked dry, Mortenson joined a group of men who built a fire by what would one day soon, he hoped, become the courtyard of a completed school. As the moon rose over Korphe K2, they danced around the fire and taught Mortenson verses from the great Himalayan Epic of Gezar, beloved across much of the roof of the world, and introduced him to their inexhaustible supply of Balti folk songs. Together, the Balti and the big American danced like dervishes and sang of feuding alpine kingdoms, of the savagery of Pathan warriors pouring in from Afghanistan, and battles between the Balti rajas and the strange European conquerors who came first from the West in the time of Alexander, and then, attended by their Gurkha hirelings, from British India to the south and east. Korphe?s women, accustomed by now to the infidel among them, stood at the edge of the firelight, their faces glowing, as they clapped and sang along with their men. The Balti had a history, a rich tradition, Mortenson realized. The fact that it wasn?t written down didn?t make it any less real. These faces ringing the fire didn?t need to be taught so much as they needed help. And the school was a place where they could help themselves. Mortenson studied the construction site. It was little more than a shallow ditch spattered with ram?s blood. He might not accomplish much more before returning home to Tara, but during that night of dancing, the school reached critical mass in his mind—it became real to him. He could see the completed building standing before him as clearly as Korphe K2, lit by the waxing moon. Mortenson turned back to face the fire. *********************************************** In May 1996, when Mortenson filled out his arrival forms at the Islamabad airport, his pen hovered unfamiliarly over the box for “occupation.” For years he?d written “climber.” This time he scrawled in his messy block printing “Director, Central Asia Institute.” Hoerni had suggested the name. The scientist envisioned an operation that could grow as fast as one of his semiconductor companies, spreading to build schools and other humanitarian projects beyond Pakistan, across the multitude of “stans” that spilled across the unraveling routes of the Silk Road. Mortenson wasn?t so sure. He?d had too much trouble getting one school off the ground to think on Hoerni?s scale. But he had a yearly salary of $21,798 he could count on and a mandate to start thinking long-term. On the far bank of the Braldu, Haji Ali stood, sculpted as always, to the highest point on the precipice. Flanked by Twaha and Jahan, he welcomed his American son back with a bear hug. The next morning, before first light, Mortenson paced back and forth on Haji Ali?s roof. He was here as the director of an organization now. He had wider responsibilities than just one school in one isolated village. The faith Jean Hoerni had invested in him lay heavy on his broad shoulders, and he was determined that there would be no more interminable meetings and banquets; he would drive the construction swiftly to completion. When the village gathered by the construction site, Mortenson met them, plumb line, level, and ledger in hand. “Getting the construction going was like conducting an orchestra,” Mortenson says. “First we used dynamite to blast the large boulders into smaller stones. Then we had dozens of people snaking through the chaos like a melody, carrying the stones to the masons. Then Makhmal the mason would form the stones into amazingly regular bricks with just a few blows from his chisel. Groups of women carried water from the river, which they mixed with cement in large holes we?d dug in the ground. Then masons would trowel on cement, and lay the bricks in slowly rising rows. Finally, dozens of village children would dart in, wedging slivers of stone into the chinks between bricks.” “We were all very excited to help,” says Hussein the teacher?s daughter Tahira, who was then ten years old. “My father told me the school would be something very special, but I had no idea then what a school was, so I came to see what everyone was so excited about, and to help. Everyone in my family helped.” “Doctor Greg brought books from his country,” says Haji Ali?s granddaughter Jahan, then nine, who would one day graduate with Tahira in the Korphe School?s first class. “And they had pictures of schools in them, so I had some idea what we were hoping to build. I thought Doctor Greg was very distinguished with his clean clothes. And the children in the pictures looked very clean also. And I remember thinking, if I go to his school, maybe one day I can become distinguished, too.” All through June, the school walls rose steadily, but with half the construction crew missing on any given day as they left to tend their crops and animals, it progressed too slowly for Mortenson?s liking. “I tried to be a tough but fair taskmaster,” Mortenson says. “I spent all day at the construction site, from sunrise to sunset, using my level to make sure the walls were even and my plumb line to check that they were standing straight. I always had my notebook in my hand, and kept my eyes on everyone, anxious to account for every rupee. I didn?t want to disappoint Jean Hoerni, so I drove people hard.” One clear afternoon at the beginning of August, Haji Ali tapped Mortenson on the shoulder at the construction site and asked him to take a walk. The old man led the former climber uphill for an hour, on legs still strong enough to humble the much younger man. Mortenson felt precious time slipping away, and by the time Haji Ali halted on a narrow ledge high above the village, Mortenson was panting, as much from the thought of all the tasks he was failing to supervise as from his exertion. Haji Ali waited until Mortenson caught his breath, then instructed him to look at the view. The air had the fresh-scrubbed clarity that only comes with altitude. Beyond Korphe K2, the ice peaks of the inner Karakoram knifed relentlessly into a defenseless blue sky. A thousand feet below, Korphe, green with ripening barley fields, looked small and vulnerable, a life raft adrift on a sea of stone. Haji Ali reached up and laid his hand on Mortenson?s shoulder. “These mountains have been here a long time,” he said. “And so have we.” He reached for his rich brown lambswool topi, the only symbol of authority Korphe?s nurmadhar ever wore, and centered it on his silver hair. “You can?t tell the mountains what to do,” he said, with an air of gravity that transfixed Mortenson as much as the view. “You must learn to listen to them. So now I am asking you to listen to me. By the mercy of Almighty Allah, you have done much for my people, and we appreciate it. But now you must do one more thing for me.” “Anything,” Mortenson said. “Sit down. And shut your mouth,” Haji Ali said. “You?re making everyone crazy.” “Then he reached out and took my plumb line, and my level and my account book, and he walked back down to Korphe,” Mortenson says. “I followed him all the way to his house, worrying about what he was doing. He took the key he always kept around his neck on a leather thong, opened a cabinet decorated with faded Buddhist wood carvings, and locked my things in there, alongside a shank of curing ibex, his prayer beads, and his old British musket gun. Then he asked Sakina to bring us tea.” Mortenson waited nervously for half an hour while Sakina brewed the paiyu cha. Haji Ali ran his fingers along the text of the Koran that he cherished above all his belongings, turning pages randomly and mouthing almost silent Arabic prayer as he stared out into inward space. When the porcelain bowls of scalding butter tea steamed in their hands, Haji Ali spoke. “If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways,” Haji Ali said, blowing on his bowl. “The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take 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 said, laying his hand warmly on Mortenson?s own. “Doctor Greg, you must make time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated. But we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time.” “That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I?ve ever learned in my life,” Mortenson says. “We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We?re the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought their „shock and awe? campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them.” Three weeks later, with Mortenson demoted from foreman to spectator, the walls of the school had risen higher than the American?s head and all that remained was putting on the roof. The roof beams Changazi pilfered were never recovered, and Mortenson returned to Skardu, where he and Parvi supervised the purchase and construction of wood beams strong enough to support the snows that mummified Korphe throughout deepest winter. Predictably, the jeeps carrying the wood up to Korphe were halted by another landslide that cut the track, eighteen miles shy of their destination. “The next morning, while Parvi and I were discussing what to do, we saw this great big dust cloud coming down the valley,” Morten?son says. “Haji Ali somehow heard about our problem, and the men of Korphe had walked all night. They arrived clapping and singing and in incredible spirits for people who hadn?t slept. And then the most amazing thing of all happened. Sher Takhi had come with them and he insisted on carrying the first load. The holy men of the villages aren?t supposed to degrade them-selves with “ physical labor. But he wouldn?t back down, and he led our column of thirty-five men carrying roof beams all the way, all eighteen miles to Korphe. Sher Takhi had polio as a child, and he walked with a limp, so it must have been agony for him. But he led us up the Braldu Valley, grinning under his load. It was this conservative mullah?s way of showing his support for educating all the children of Korphe, even the girls.” Not all the people of the Braldu shared Sher Takhi?s view. A week later, Mortenson stood with his arm over Twaha?s shoulder, admiring the skillful way Makhmal and his crew were fitting the roof beams into place, when a cry went up from the boys scattered across Kor-phe?s rooftops. A band of strangers was crossing the bridge, they warned, and on their way up to the village. Mortenson followed Haji Ali to his lookout on the bluff high over the bridge. He saw five men approaching. One, who appeared to be the leader, walked at the head of the procession. The four burly men walking behind carried clubs made of poplar branches that they smacked against their palms in time with their steps. The leader was a thin, unhealthy looking older man who leaned on his cane as he climbed to Korphe. He stopped, rudely, fifty yards from Haji Ali, and made Korphe?s nurmadhar walk out to greet him. Twaha leaned toward Mortenson. “This man Haji Mehdi. No good,” he whispered. Mortenson was already acquainted with Haji Mehdi, the nurmad-har of Askole. “He made a show of being a devout Muslim,” Mortenson says. “But he ran the economy of the whole Braldu Valley like a mafia boss. He took a percentage of every sheep, goat, or chicken the Balti sold, and he ripped off climbers, setting outrageous prices for supplies. If someone sold so much as an egg to an expedition without paying him his cut, Haji Mehdi sent his henchmen to beat them with clubs. After Haji Ali embraced Mehdi, Askole?s nurmadhar declined his invitation to tea. “I will speak out in the open, so you all can hear me,” he said to the crowd assembled along the bluff. “I have heard that an infidel has come to poison Muslim children, boys as well as girls, with his teachings,” Haji Mehdi barked. “Allah forbids the education of girls. And I forbid the construction of this school.” “We will finish our school,” Haji Ali said evenly. “Whether you forbid it or not.” Mortenson stepped forward, hoping to defuse the violence gathering in the air. “Why don?t we have tea and talk about this.” “I know who you are, kafir,” Mehdi said, using the ugliest term for infidel. “And I have nothing to say to you.” “And you, are you not a Muslim?” Mehdi said, turning menac?ingly toward Haji Ali. “There is only one God. Do you worship Al?lah? Or this kafir?” Haji Ali clapped his hand on Mortenson?s shoulder. “No one else has ever come here to help my people. I?ve paid you money every year but you have done nothing for my village. This man is a better Muslim than you. He deserves my devotion more than you do.” Haji Mehdi?s men fingered their clubs uneasily. He raised a hand to steady them. “If you insist on keeping your kafir school, you must pay a price,” Mehdi said, the lids of his eyes lowering. “I demand twelve of your largest rams.” “As you wish,” Haji Ali said, turning his back on Mehdi, to emphasize how he had degraded himself by demanding a bribe. “Bring the chogo rabak!” he ordered. “You have to understand, in these villages, a ram is like a firstborn child, prize cow, and family pet all rolled into one,” Mortenson ex?plains. “The most sacred duty of each family?s oldest boy was to care for their rams, and they were devastated.” Haji Ali kept his back turned to the visitors until twelve boys ap-proached, dragging the thick-horned, heavy-hooved beasts. He ac-cepted the bridles from them and tied the rams together. All the boys wept as they handed over their most cherished possessions to their nurmadhar. Haji Ali led the line of rams, lowing mournfully, to Haji Mehdi, and threw the lead to him without a word. Then he turned on his heel and herded his people toward the site of the school. “It was one of the most humbling things I?ve ever seen,” Morten-son says. “Haji Ali had just handed over half the wealth of the village to that crook, but he was smiling like he?d just won a lottery.” Haji Ali paused before the building everyone in the village had worked so hard to raise. It held its ground firmly before Korphe K2, with snugly built stone walls, plastered and painted yellow, and thick wooden doors to beat back the weather. Never again would Korphe?s children kneel over their lessons on frozen ground. “Don?t be sad,” he told the shattered crowd. “Long after all those rams are dead and eaten this school will still stand. Haji Mehdi has food today. Now our children have education forever.” After dark, by the light of the fire that smoldered in his balti, Haji Ali beckoned Mortenson to sit beside him. He picked up his dog-eared, grease-spotted Koran and held it before the flames. “Do you see how beautiful this Koran is?” Haji Ali asked. “Yes.” “I can?t read it,” he said. “I can?t read anything. This is the greatest sadness in my life. I?ll do anything so the children of my village never have to know this feeling. I?ll pay any price so they have the education they deserve.” “Sitting there beside him,” Mortenson says, “I realized that every-thing, all the difficulties I?d gone through, from the time I?d promised to build the school, through the long struggle to complete it, was nothing compared to the sacrifices he was prepared to make for his people. Here was this illiterate man, who?d hardly ever left his little village in the Karakoram,” Mortenson says. “Yet he was the wisest man I?ve ever met.”