Three Cups of Tea

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In the middle of this chaos , Osama bin Laden , the leader of a terrorist group called Al-Qaeda ,had arrived in Afganistán .He planned to make the country in his new home.

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Can I give you some advice? Haji Ali interrupted .

Sure .

Why don’t you leave it to us?I will call a meeting of all the elders of the Braldu and see what village is ready to donate free land and labor for a school .That way your do not have to flap all over Baltistan like a crow again ,eating here and there, Haji Ali said,laughing .

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The chief’s name was Muhammad Aslam Khan .When he was a boy , his father had woken him up early one morning and told him that he was leaving the village .Why do I have to go ? Aslam asked ,crying.

You are going to school ,”his father said .Aslam’s father walked with him down their mountain until the trail ended at a river with no bridge.Aslam couldn’t swim, but he clung to goat bladders blown full of air to stay afloat and kicked his way across the icy water .A stranger that he had crossed the river to go to school, the man confronted him.

Don’t be afraid ,he said .

‘You are a brave boy to come so far from home.One day ,you ll be honored by everyone when you return.

CHAPTER 17 -Running from War

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For as long as Greg had been coming to Pakistan, the country had been fighting with its neighbor ,India, over the region of Kashmir.

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Life was very cruel in the caves,said Fatima’s friend Nargiz Ali.Our village ,Brolmo ,was a very beautiful place ,with apricot and even cherry trees ,on a slope by the Indus River.But we could only glance out at it and watch it being destroyed.

Every time a shell exploded ,Amina would shake and cry and fall to the Earth.

Fatima explained .In that place there were no caves , so all we could do is run .I am ashamed to say that I was so frightened that I stopped tugging at my sister than the shelling ,and she ran to join the rest of the village.

For three weeks , the survivors of Brolmo walked northwest, finding their way on paths made by animals,eating whatever berries and wild plants they could find ,always hungry.At last they arrived in Skardu, and the dunes by the airport.But it was too late for Aamina.”When we reached our new village ,Aamina lay down and would not get up.”Fatima says .

No one could revive her;and not even being safe at last with our father and uncles seemed to cheer her.She died after a few days.

Chapter 18-Too Much To do

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In the sports store in apple valley,Minnesota,Greg`s speech

He finished by quoting Mother Teresa , a Catholic nun who spent many years in India, working to improve the lives of the poor.What we are trying to do be just drop in the ocean , he said ,smiling warmly at his small audience.But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

Page 117

Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen’s idea (Amartya Kumar Sen (Bengali: [ˈɔmortːo ˈʃen]; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher, who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, economic and social justice, economic theories of famines, decision theory, development economics, public health, and measures of well-being of countries.He is currently a Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University.[5] He formerly served as Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge.[6] He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences[7] in 1998 and India's Bharat Ratna in 1999 for his work in welfare economics)

That you can change a culture by giving its girl the tools to grow up educated so they can help themselves.It was amazing to see the idea in action, working so well after only a generation , and it fired me up to fight girls` education in Pakistan.

Mother Terasa

Mother Teresa (26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), also known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was an Albanian(Arnavutluk)-Indian Catholic nun who, in 1950, founded the Missionaries of Charity. Although her passport name was Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu[6], she was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (Albanian: [aˈɲɛzə ˈɡɔndʒɛ bɔjaˈdʒiu]) in Üsküb[a]—now Skopje, capital of North Macedonia. After living in Skopje for eighteen years, she moved to Ireland and then to India, where she lived for most of her life.

After Mother Teresa founded her religious congregation, it grew to have over 4,500 nuns and was active in 133 countries as of 2012.[7] The congregation manages homes for people who are dying of HIV/AIDS, leprosy, and tuberculosis. The congregation also runs soup kitchens, dispensaries, mobile clinics, children's and family counselling programmes, as well as orphanagesand schools. Members take vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience and also profess a fourth vow: to give "wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor."[8]

Greg headed to where Mother Terasa lay ,among hundreds of quiet mourners.A young nun led him to the room where Mother Terasa’s body was. He sat in the corner , looking at her body ,covered by a shroud.Greg says he had no idea what to do .Since I was a little boy , she had been one of my heroes.She looked so small, draped in that cloth he said .”And I remember thinking how amazing it was that such a tiny person had such a huge effect on humanity.

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More than ten thousand Afghan refugees, mostly women and children, had fled from the Taliban rebels who had taken over the government of their country.Finally they reached the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan.Soldiers on the Tajik side would not let them in; the Taliban would not let them go back.On islands in the middle of a river, they lived in mud huts and ate grass, slowly starving.

Taliban

ruled approximately three-quarters of the country from 1996–2001, before being overthrown following the United States invasion

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Since I started working in Pakistan ,I haven’t sleep much.Greg said. “But that winter of 1999 and 2000 ,I hardly slept at all.I was up all night, pacing my basement, trying to find some way to help them.”

Greg wrote letters to the newspapers, to the president, to Congress, trying to get someone to help the refugees. “ But no one cared, Greg said.”Bottom line is , I failed.I couldn’t make anyone care.And Tara will tell you I was a nightmare.All I could think about was all those freezing children who had never have a chance to grow up, helpless out there between groups of men with guns… I was actually going a bit crazy.It was amazing that Tara put up with me that winter.

In times of war, he went on , you often hear leaders -Christian,Jewish and Muslim -saying, God is on our side .But that isn’t true.God is on the side of refugees, widows, and orphans.

Chapter 19:A Village called New York

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The men hugged Greg and the women kissed him in the traditional way, laying their palms on his cheek and kissing the backs of their own hand.(Tradition)

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On Friday, September 14

Greg and McCown traveled to Kuardu, Changazi’s village for official ceremony to inaugurate the school.

Syed Abbas gave the most important speech.Today is a day that you children will remember forever and tell your grandchildren he said.,Today , from the darkness of illiteracy, the light of education shines bright.

I request America to look into our hearts, he went on , and see that great majority of us are not terrorists, but good and simple people.Our land is stricken with 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.The true core tenets of Islam are justice, tolerance, and charity.

After the ceremony ,many of the widows of Kuardu lined up to meet Greg and McCown.They pressed eggs into their hands, a traditional symbol of grief and mourning.They begged the two Americans to take the eggs to the women they thought of as sisters, the new widows far away in the village called New York.

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After visiting the grave of Haji Ali’s wife , he said I am nothing without her, “Nothing at all.

“One day soon, you are going to come here looking for me and find me planted in the ground, too,Haji Ali said,chuckling.

Greg asked “what should I do when that time comes?

Haji Ali looked up at the summit of Korphe K2.Listen to the wind, he said .

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Later on Greg visited the grave of Haji Ali and he reminded the last words of Haji Ali which was listen to the wind. He listened.Greg heard the wind whistling down the Braldu Gorge.It carried to him the sound of Korphe’s children, playing in the courtyard of the school.Think of them he told to himself.

Chapter 20:Afghanistan