Chapter 2 On the rooftops of Rawalpindi

Prayer is better than sleep. ——Islamic Adhan He woke up drenched in sweat, his body clutching the money.Twelve thousand eight hundred dollars, all in green, easy-to-count hundred-dollar bills, tucked into battered green nylon pouches.Among them, 12,000 yuan will be used to build the school, and 800 yuan will be his living expenses for the next few months.The room was so shabby that there was no place to hide the bag, so he had to put it next to his clothes.Before he did anything after leaving San Francisco, he would reflexively pat the bag to make sure the money was still there. Mortenson jumped out of the rickety hammock, stepped on the wet concrete floor, and drew back the curtains. A patch of sky, separated by the nearby green-tiled mosque, was tinged with the purple light of dawn or dusk.He rubbed his face, trying to shake off the drowsiness on his face, while thinking, it must be dusk, he arrived in Islamabad in the early morning, so he must have slept all day.

Flying halfway around the world, the price of his cheap airfare was a fifty-six-hour journey: from San Francisco to Atlanta, via Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi to Dubai, and finally to the crazy, sweltering Islamabad airport.Now he is in Rawalpindi, the green and bustling twin city of Islamabad, where the rent is cheap.The manager of the Koyaban Hotel assured him that he would have the "cheapest" room. Every penny counts these days.Every dollar wasted is equivalent to the loss of school bricks and teaching materials.Eighty rupees a night, roughly the equivalent of two dollars, kept Mortenson uneasy.This small room less than three meters square and separated by glass on the roof of the hotel looks more like a tool storage room in the garden than a guest room.He put on his trousers, straightened Shaval, who was sticking to his chest, and opened the door.It wasn't much cooler in the evening, but at least it was airy.

Abdul Shah, the waiter in the hotel, squatted on the floor in his dirty light blue Shawar Kameez, looking at Mortenson with reverence through his cataract-free eye. "Peace be upon you, sir, Mr. Gregg," as if he'd been waiting for Mortenson all afternoon to wake up. Because the hotel is being expanded, Mortenson is surrounded by sacks of cement.Sitting on a rusty folding chair, he drank a cup of sweet and thick milk tea from the notched teapot sent by Abudu, trying to sort out his thoughts and draw up a plan. He also lived in Keyaban a year ago, carefully preparing various details of the mountaineering activities, busy every minute of every day: from packing luggage, sorting flour bags and freeze-dried food, to applying for climbing permits, arranging air tickets, Then to hire Alpine cooperation and mule team.

"Mr. Greg," Abu Du seemed to see through his thoughts, "may I ask why you came back?" "I'll come back and build a school, if Allah wills," Mortenson replied. "In Rawalpindi, Mr. Gregg?" Mortenson drank his tea and began to tell Abudu about his failed attempt to climb K2, getting lost on the glacier, and how the villagers of Korfei took care of him, a lost stranger. Kneeling and sitting on the ground, Abudu sucked his teeth and thought while clutching his big belly. "Are you rich?" He eyed Mortenson's scuffed running shoes and worn-out earth-colored chauvins suspiciously.

"No." Mortenson replied.He didn't know how to put into words the clumsy efforts of the past year. "Many Americans, even children, have donated money to help me build a school." He took out the green nylon bag hidden under the gown, and showed the money to Abudu. "If I save enough, the money is just enough to build a school." Abudu stood up resolutely. "Before the glory of Allah's mercy rises, we must bargain more tomorrow, and we must bargain hard." He said and left with the tea set. Sitting on a folding chair, Mortenson heard the circuit noise of the sound test from the mosque's loudspeaker. The noise startled a flock of sparrows on the tamarind tree in the garden. up the roof.

The shouts of muezzins from Islamic temples scattered throughout Rawalpindi added a touch of mystery to the fading twilight.Mortenson had gone up to this same roof a year ago to hear the voices of Rawalpindi at dusk, and now, standing alone on the roof, the muezzins seemed to be chanting directly to him; With hundreds of years of reminders of faith and responsibility, it is clearly a call to oneself.Mortenson immediately brushed aside the skepticism that had haunted him for the past year.Tomorrow is the time to get started. At 4:30, the mosque turned on the loudspeaker, and the voice of the muezzin cleared his throat, preparing to wake Rawalpindi from his sleep for morning prayers.Abudu's knock on the door and the announcement of the muezzin sounded at the same time.Mortenson opened the door and found that Abudu was already standing at the door with a tea tray.

"There's a taxi waiting outside, but tea first, Mr Gregg." "Taxi?" Mortenson asked, rubbing his eyes. "Go buy cement." Abudu replied, as if explaining addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to a student who was slow to react. "How can you build a school without cement?" "No, no, oh, of course not." Mortenson laughed, gulping down his tea to wake himself up quickly. At sunrise, they drove west on what was once known as the Grand Trunk.The border between Afghanistan and India is often closed, so the international highway, which winds 2,600 kilometers from the Afghan capital Kabul to Calcutta, India, was recently downgraded to National Highway One.Their little yellow Suzuki car seemed to have no suspension system at all. When the car rolled over potholes on the road at a speed of 100 kilometers per hour, Mortenson, who was stuck in the narrow back seat, had to be careful not to hit his chin suddenly on his knee at any time.

When they arrived in Taxila at six o'clock in the morning, the weather was already very hot. In 326 BC, Alexander the Great sent troops here to defend the easternmost territory of the empire.Taxila is located at the meeting point of the east-west trade route (the "grand trunk line" in the future), which happens to divide the ancient Silk Road into two sections, thus becoming a hub of ancient culture.There are various ancient architectural sites here. It was not only the location of the third largest Buddhist temple, but also the base for Buddhism to spread to the north.Today, the ancient mosques in Taxila have been repainted, but the Buddhist temples have long been mottled and broken into scattered rock slabs.The marl-covered wastelands of the Himalayan foothills have now become industrial cities, and the sky is filled with clouds of smoke that will never dissipate.

Mortenson really wanted to go straight into the first cement factory and start bargaining, but Abudu told him like teaching a primary school student: "Mr. Greg, we have to drink tea first and learn about cement." Mortenson sat on the narrow bench, trying to maintain his balance, blowing off his fifth cup of green tea, and trying to guess the conversation between Abdul and the two old men in the teahouse, whose white beards were stained with nicotine. yellow.They seemed to be chatting rather vigorously, and Mortenson was sure it was about cement. "What's next?" After leaving a few dirty rupee notes on the table, Mortenson asked, "Which factory? Fektor? Forky? Ascali?"

"Can't you hear that they have no way to give us advice?" Abudu explained, "They suggested that we go to another teahouse. The owner's relatives used to be in the cement business." After visiting two more teahouses and drinking countless cups of green tea, they finally got their answer, and it was almost noon.Fuji's cement has a good reputation as a real material, which will not deteriorate due to the absence of impurities, so it will not crumble in the harsh climate of the Himalayas.Mortenson estimated that the school would need such cement, so he planned to order a hundred packs.He was about to make a serious bargain, but he was surprised to find that Abudu walked into the office of the cement factory, ordered the cement politely, and took the receipt stating that he would deliver 100 bags of cement to the Keyaban Hotel within a week , asking him to pay the other party a deposit of one hundred dollars.

"Don't you want to bargain?" Mortenson folded the receipt and asked suspiciously. Abdu once again showed patience with his students.He lit a strong-smelling Tander cigarette in the sweltering taxi, and waved the smoke and Mortenson's worries away with his hand: "Bargain? Cement is not good. The cement business is..." He searched for the right words. , trying to get the unresponsive American student to understand, "...the mafia. Lots of bass tomorrow at Laga Market, lots of bargains." Mortenson buried his chin between his knees as the taxi drove in the direction of Rawalpindi. Back at the Koyaban Hotel, Mortenson heard a tearing sound as he took the earthy Shawar off his head in the shower.He turned the jacket over and examined it carefully, and found that it was ripped in the middle from the shoulders to the waist.Under the thin stream of water, he washed away the dust and mud along the way as much as possible, and put on the only set of Pakistani clothes.This Xiawaer faithfully followed him all the way to and from K2, so it was time to replace it with a new one. A Budu stopped Mortenson on his way back to his room, pointed to the torn part of the clothes, and proposed to find a tailor. They left the oasis where Koyaban was, and entered the city of Rawalpindi.A dozen horse-drawn taxis on the street are ready to leave at any time. The horses are sweating and stomping in the dusty heat, and an old man with a dyed beard is bargaining hard. Mortenson looked up and saw for the first time a brightly colored billboard at the crowded intersection of Kashmir Road and Adamji Road. "Please patronize Dr. Azada," the billboard read in English.Next to the advertisement is a rough but powerful skull, with lifeless eyes still shining on the small skull, accompanied by Dr. Azada's signature as a guarantee: "No side effects!" Tailors don't advertise.His small shop is squeezed between a concrete honeycomb of shopkeepers on Hyde Road, and the building looks like it has been dilapidated for years and is still desperately waiting for further completion.Although squatting in the two-meter-wide humble storefront, stacked in front of an electric fan, rolls of fabric, and a plastic mannequin for clothing, the tailor Manzor exuded a dignified look, with serious black frames and neatly trimmed His white beard gave him the air of a scholar when he measured Mortenson's chest.He looked at the measurement in surprise, took another measurement, and wrote the number down in his notebook. "Sir, Manzoor wants to apologize." Abudu explained, "Your clothes need six meters of fabric, and our people here only use four meters, so he has to charge you fifty rupees more. I think he is telling the truth .” Mortenson understood and asked to make two sets of Shawar Kameez.Abudu stood on the tailor's work platform, and pulled out a roll of beautiful blue fabric that looked like a robin's egg, and another roll of pale grass green.Mortenson imagined Balti's dust, insisting on the same earthy brown for both outfits. "You can't see it even when it's covered in mud," he told the disappointed Abudu. "Sir, Mr. Greg," Abudu begged, "It's better for you to be a clean gentleman, so that many people will respect you." Mortenson thought again of the sights of Korfei: villagers wintering out in basements of stone and earth, huddled with their livestock, around fires burning with yak dung, wearing their only set of shabby clothes. "Earth is fine," he said. As Manzoor took Mortenson's deposit, the muezzin's announcement pierced through the concrete hive of the store.The tailor put the money aside immediately, unfolded the faded pink kneeling rug, and laid it neatly. "Can you teach me to pray?" Mortenson blurted out. "Are you Muslim?" "I respect Islam." Mortenson replied, and Abudu showed approval from the side. “Come here,” Manzor said cheerfully, beckoning Mortenson to the cluttered table where he stood—beside a headless plastic mannequin riddled with needles. Mortenson tried to squeeze into the narrow space next to the tailor, but accidentally bumped into the model, and the dummy fell on top of him as if dissatisfied with him. Mortenson carefully imitated the tailor's movements, but he couldn't bend his body down halfway.He felt that the rips in his torn jacket continued to open indecently, and the electric fan chilled his bare back. "Is it okay?" he asked. The tailor's piercing eyes studied him through thick glasses. "Try again next time you come to get your Shawar Kameez," he said, rolling up the kneeling rug tightly. "Maybe it will improve." Mortenson's glass house absorbed the heat of the sun all day, and it was unbearably hot at night. As for the daytime, the sound of kitchen knives chopping lamb bones and joints could be heard from the butcher shop downstairs.And when he tried to fall asleep, there was a mysterious gurgling sound from the pipes under the bed.Hanging high from the ceiling is a bright fluorescent tube that stays on brutally all night.Mortenson looked in and out of the room, but couldn't find the switch for the fluorescent light.When it was almost dawn, Mortenson hid under the sweat-soaked sheets that couldn't block the light at all, and suddenly thought of a way.Standing on the hammock, he swayed for balance, then groped carefully for the joint and unscrewed the light tube.In the darkness, he fell asleep happily, until the sound of Abudu's vigorous knock on the door sounded. Mortenson always gets excited about the "orderly chaos" that emerges in the Laca market at sunrise.Although Abudu can only use his left eye, he can pull Mortenson's hand through moving mazes one after another, including porters carrying bundles of wires with their heads tilted, and rushing through the maze before the ice covered by the sackcloth melts. Delivery mule cart. Shops around the main square sell various tools for demolition and construction of houses.There are eight linked stores that sell similar sledgehammers; a dozen others seem to sell only nails, nails of all sizes gleaming in coffin-sized display slots.After a lengthy fundraising campaign, Mortenson was thrilled to see the various real parts from which the school was built next to him.Maybe one of the nails in there was the last one when Korfy School was finished. Mortenson reminded himself not to get carried away, but to bargain with all his strength.Under his arm was a newspaper-wrapped shoebox containing ten hundred-dollar bills in rupees. They started with a lumber shop.Although the shops on the left and right sides look similar, Abudu insists on his choice. "This man is a good Muslim," he explained. Mortenson was ushered down a long, narrow passage past a row of beams that leaned wildly and teetering against the wall, and he was placed on a pile of thick rugs next to his boss, Ali.The immaculate lavender shava on Ali's body was nothing short of a miracle in this dusty and noisy environment.Mortenson realized for the first time that his shwar was ripped and dirty, and that Abu had sewed up the ripped place.After apologizing for the tea not being ready, Ali sent the children to buy three bottles of orange soda without ice. The architect Lauf's office is in a cubicle in the lobby of the Coyaban Hotel. Mortenson spent two crumpled hundred-dollar bills and asked him to draw a school with five classrooms arranged in an L shape. design diagram.In the margins of the design drawings, Lauf carefully listed the building materials needed to build the school, which covers an area of ​​less than 200 square meters, among which wood is the most expensive.Mortenson opened the blueprint and read out the small characters written by the architect: "28.12 meters long, 5.1 centimeters thick, and 10.2 centimeters high. Fifty-four pieces are 1.2 meters wide and 2 points long. Four meters of plywood.” The architect’s budget for this part was $2,500.Mortenson handed the picture to Abdu. While Mortenson drank warm orange soda through a straw, Abu read the wood specifications on the design drawing one by one, and Ali skillfully dialed the abacus on his lap.Soon, Ali straightened the crooked white worship hat on his head, stroked his long beard, and finally said the number, and Abu's entire face turned green.Sitting cross-legged, he suddenly jumped up, slapped his forehead hard, as if he had been shot, and began to cry and curse loudly.Although relying on his excellent language talent, Mortenson can already understand most of the daily Urdu, but it was the first time he heard the complex curses and laments used by Abdu.Finally, when Abudu held Alibi and gestured with a pistol, Mortenson understood that he was asking Alibi whether he was a Muslim or a pagan. "The gentleman who gave you the opportunity to buy your wood is a Hamdad, a holy man who performed zakat (an act of charity)!" Abdull scolded, "A true Muslim would immediately take this opportunity to help the poor children instead of trying to extract their money!" When Abudu cursed angrily, Ali remained unmoved, sipping orange soda comfortably, waiting for Abudu to finish cursing. Just as he was about to take some effort to respond to Abdu's accusation, tea arrived in a fine bone china cup.The three of them invariably added sugar to the fragrant green tea and stirred it. For the next few minutes, the only sound in the room was the sound of the teaspoon tapping the cup. Ali took a sip of his tea, nodded in satisfaction, and gave some instructions towards the aisle.Abudu, who was still full of anger, sat down cross-legged again, put the tea aside and didn't even drink it.Ali's son, a young man with a short beard, brought over two samples of sliced ​​wood and set them up like bookends on the rug beside Mortenson's teacup. As if tasting an old wine, Ali took the tea in his mouth and moistened it, then swallowed it down his throat, and began a professional explanation.He pointed to the piece of wood on Mortenson's right—a piece of wood that was darkly scarred and oily, with very uneven cut ends and spikes like a porcupine—and picked it up as if looking through a telescope. General, looking at Mortenson through the moth-eaten hole, "local processing," he said in English, then pointed to another piece of wood, "English processing." That piece of wood did not have any scars, and the cut was even and regular. rectangle.Ali handed it to Mortenson, and fanned it with his other hand, letting him smell the original forest of the wood, the Jiahang Valley. Ali's son came with two more splints.This time he put the plywood on the pile of coal, then took off his sandals and stepped on the plywood.He who weighed less than forty-five kilograms stood on the first splint, and the board immediately bent and deformed, making a harsh sound.He stood on the second splint, which was only slightly dented a few centimeters.Ali made the boy jump up and down on it, the splints still solid and secure. "Triple plywood," Ali said to Mortenson, nodding at the first plywood. "Plywood." He looked proudly at the board his son was bouncing on. Then he switched to Urdu, which Mortenson could not understand but could guess.Apparently he was saying, "You can buy lumber for cheap, but it depends on what the lumber is like. Other unscrupulous dealers might sell jerky stuff, go ahead and build a school with that stuff!" One more year, think of a lovely seven-year-old boy reciting one day, the floor will get a horrible crack, and his artery will be cut with poor quality and unreliable material. You want to sentence a seven-year-old to death, let him Bleeding to death slowly? Just because you want to save money and refuse to buy good wood." The exaggerated performance continued.Mortenson finished his second cup of tea and played with his fingers on the dusty pile of rugs.Abudu got up three times and walked towards the gate as if to leave, and Ali lowered the price three times.After more than an hour, Mortenson's patience was at its limit.There were dozens of similar deals to be negotiated, and the materials to be shipped to Baltistan the day after tomorrow, and he had no time to waste any more.Mortenson overturned the empty jug, got up and gestured for Abudu to leave together. "Buzzy, Buzzy (sit, sit)!" Ali said, grabbing Mortenson's sleeve. "You won, he has already cut my price!" Mortenson looked at Abdu. "Yes, he is telling the truth, Mr. Greg, you only need to pay 87,000 rupees," Abdu said.Mortenson quickly calculated in his mind: $2,300. "I told you," Abdul said, "he's a good Muslim. Now we can sign." Ali ordered another pot of tea, and Mortenson steadied himself and sat down again. After two full days of bargaining, in the evening of the second day, Mortenson and Abudu, whose stomachs were almost bursting with tea, finally walked back to Koyaban in the mud, followed by a two-wheeled cart pulled by a pony. Looked even more tired than they were.Mortenson's Shaval's pockets were full of receipts for materials such as hammers, saws, nails, corrugated tinplate for the roof, lumber to support the weight of the students, and so on.The materials will be delivered to their rented trucks by dawn tomorrow, before taking another three days to reach the plateau. Abudu had suggested taking a taxi back to the hotel, but Mortenson insisted on saving money, spooked by the alarming rate at which rupees in his shoebox dropped every time he paid a deposit.There were Morris black taxis without mufflers all over the street. The two of them tried their best to shuttle between the traffic and the sultry exhaust, and walked for less than four kilometers for more than an hour. After returning to the hotel, Mortenson didn't even bother to take off Shaval, so he poured buckets of water on his head to barely wash away the dust from the whole day's travel, and then rushed to the tailor's shop to get the ready-made clothes. clothes in case Manzor closes early for Friday evening prayers. When Mortenson arrived, Manzoor was ironing his shawar with a coal-heated iron, humming Urdu pop to the music outside.Music came from the radio in the shoe store at the other end of the aisle, echoing from building to building, occasionally accompanied by the squeak of iron doors being pulled down as several stores closed. Mortenson put on a clean oatmeal-coloured jacket that was still warm from the iron, and was still a little wrinkled, barely covering the vital parts, and then put on new baggy trousers and tied the "Azar stick" (waist cord), Tie a tight knot and turn around for Manzoor to see if it fits. "Bahat Kara no (terrible)!" He lunged at Mortenson, grabbing the Azar Stick dangling from the heathen's trousers and tucking it under his belt. "This is forbidden!" Manzor told him. Manzor wiped his glasses on the hem of his coat, looked at the relaced trousers, and carefully examined Mortenson's full outfit. "Now you look half Pakistani," he said. "Shall we try praying again?" Manzor closed the store door and led Mortenson out.The evening sun was about to set, taking away part of the sweltering heat by the way.Mortenson and the tailor walked towards the mosque hand in hand. On both sides of the road, men walked in twos and threes, and the shops on the roadside closed their doors one after another. When his prayers merged with the prayers around him, he suddenly realized that this was the only moment in his life in Pakistan when no one saw him as an outsider. Another day is over, what kind of change is waiting for him ahead?