- "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. "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."--pg 150
- "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 hcildren 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 everything, 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. "Yes he was the wisest man I"ve ever met." --pg 153
- "I request America to look into our hearts," Abbas continued, his voice straining with emotion, "and see that the great majority of us are poverty because we are without education. But today, another candle of knowledge has been lit. In the name of Allah the Almighty may it light our way out of the darkness we find ourselves in." "it was an incredible speech," Mortenson says. "And by the time Syed Abbas had finished he had the entire crowd in tears. I wish all the Americans who think 'Muslim' is just another way of saying 'terrorist' could have been there that day. The true core tenants of Islam are justice, tolerance, and charity, and Syed Abbas represented the moderate center of Muslim faith eloquently." --pg 257
jan 5 2011 ∞
apr 20 2011 +
apr 20 2011 +