When the porcelain bowls of scalding butter tea steamed in their hands, Haji Ali spoke: “If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways,” Haji Ali said, blowing on his bowl. “The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honoured 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 and warmly on Mortenson’s own. “Dr. Greg, you must make time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated. But we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time.”
“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 to 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.”
Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin in “Three Cups of Tea”
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