Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way by Jon Krakauer

clinic was probably only ten or fifteen miles away, but ‘ T.I.A. ’— This Is Afghanistan. The jeep that showed up doesn ’ t have working lights and the road is bad. ” Eventually they arrived at Khundud village, the district capital, where the U.S. Agency for International Development ran a clinic. By then, says Callahan, Sarfraz was “ in pretty bad shape. Vomiting a lot. Howling with pain. At the time it seemed pretty dramatic. ”
    Before arriving in Khundud, Callahan had called Mortenson with Sarfraz ’ s satellite phone, and Greg, from his home in Montana, frantically began trying to arrange an emergency helicopter evacuation. The treatment Sarfraz received at the USAID clinic greatly relieved his symptoms, however, and in the morning he no longer seemed in imminent danger. So rather than wait for a chopper, Callahan told Mortenson, “ We ’ re going to just keep driving out of the Wakhan. ” Callahan and Sarfraz headed down the valley with an IV in Sarfraz ’ s arm, and a few days later arrived in the city of Faizabad, where Sarfraz received further treatment and continued to recover.
    Still in crisis mode, Mortenson did everything in his power to get Sarfraz on a plane from Faizabad to Kabul, to no avail. So Callahan called Whitney Azoy, who immediately booked seats on a PACTEC flight for both Callahan and Sarfraz, picked them up at the Kabul airport, and gave them a place to stay. After resting, Callahan says, Sarfraz felt fine: “ He flashed me his trademark grin and said ‘ Moshkel nist ’— no problem. ” Announcing that he would seek a surgical remedy for his ailment when he arrived home, Sarfraz flew to Islamabad the following day. “ We said goodbye, ” says Callahan, “ and that was it. ”
    Mortenson provides a much more exciting version of this incident in Stones into Schools . In his account (on pages 209 – 213), when Sarfraz arrived in Faizabad, he learned from a doctor that he had a massive septic infection and needed emergency surgery. A Red Cross plane flew him to Kabul International Airport, where upon landing he was immediately whisked across the tarmac to “ a special flight arranged by our good friend Colonel Ilyas Mirza, a retired Pakistan military aviator … , [which] was waiting to fly him to Islamabad. Within minutes of arriving at the Combined Military Hospital in Rawalpindi, Sarfraz was rushed directly into surgery. ”
    “ Greg was working the phones hard, ” Callahan says, “ I ’ ll give him that. He didn ’ t sleep for two days. They were calling everyone they knew … . But we got out of there on our own accord. ”
    Callahan left Afghanistan in June 2006. He hoped to return to the Wakhan to complete his report for CAI as soon as possible, but by summer ’ s end he ’ d heard nothing further from Mortenson about the Bozai project. “ Greg is hot and cold, ” Callahan remarks philosophically. “ When you ’ ve got his attention you can expect huge email traffic, long phone calls — and then he ’ ll just kind of disappear and go silent. ”
    In September 2006, Callahan was in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where he ’ d been awarded a fellowship at the American University of Central Asia. There was still no word from Mortenson about going back to the Wakhan, so he returned on his own initiative. After traveling overland from Kyrgyzstan to Tajikistan, he crossed the Amu Darya into Afghanistan and made his way to the high Pamir, where he introduced himself to the storied leader of the Afghan Kyrgyz, Abdul Rashid Khan. For the next two days Callahan remained at the khan ’ s seasonal camp, Karajelga — a clutch of felt-covered yurts near the headwaters of the Little Pamir River, nineteen miles beyond Bozai Gumbaz.
    Mortenson devotes most of a chapter in Stones into Schools (pages 121 – 134) to the first and only time he ever met Abdul Rashid Khan — an accidental encounter that occurred in May 2005 in the city of Baharak, fifty miles outside the entrance to