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Walking around the remote village of Patika, in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, Greg Mortensen, at well over six feet tall, was hard to miss that day in 2006. Some villagers understood he was there to build schools, but since the devastating earthquake a year before, they were used to relief workers coming and going.
Mr. Mortensen's bestselling book, "Three Cups of Tea," had been read and discussed in just about every woman's book club in the US, but in Kashmir he was a virtual stranger.
Never one to miss an opportunity to learn something new, law student and teacher Fozia Naseer invited the stranger for tea in the refugee tent she shared with her mother and sister, set amid the rubble of her once pleasant town. In this Muslim part of the world, a woman inviting a man for tea was nontraditional – even bold.
But ever since she was a child worrying her conservative elders with dreams of becoming a lawyer, Ms. Naseer was not afraid to veer from the norm.
Little did she know just how far from the norm those few cups of tea would take her. Mortensen's visit lasted just over an hour – "He talked about education," Naseer recalls simply. But Mortensen saw in Naseer impressive drive and intellect – exactly what his nonprofit Central Asia Institute (CAI) has been trying to tap in women in the developing world for 12 years.
He left her $250 to help her finish law school, and he shot off a note to Genevieve Chabot, CAI's international program manager, asking her to pay Naseer a visit upon her return to Kashmir.
That's how Naseer now finds herself at Montana State University (MSU) high in the Rockies, far from her home below the towering Himalayas.
In "Three Cups of Tea," Mortensen recounts exhilarating, often perilous stories of his immersion in Pakistani culture as he struggles to build schools for girls in mountain villages. Now, using a scholarship that MSU gave him for the person of his choice, Mortensen has immersed Naseer – who is portrayed in his upcoming second book – in American culture. Along with classes, she's training to become a CAI liaison in Kashmir.
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