Three Cups of Tea; When A Stranger Becomes A Family

 

With the first cup of tea you are a stranger.

With the second… a friend.

With the third cup of tea, you are family.

This book is written by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin (2009). Then, it is adapted by Sarah Thomson to the young reader’s edition.

I was wondering why this book named by "Three Cups of Tea"? not by other names? Then it takes my curiosity to read more and find "why". Why should I read this book? I look and read carefully the cover --front and back cover-- , then I was impressed by the sentences wrote on the back cover that I wrote in the beginning.

 

Then, I read page by page and see as if I was in Pakistan. When I read “tea tradition”, I remember “Highway”—an Indian or Bollywood film--. I got that tea is a welcoming tradition to the guest. It is like coffee time in here, Aceh, my hometown.

I found the “original” sentence of that back cover in the following sentence. When Haji Ali spoke, “if you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored 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”.

Haji Ali then said, again “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 a long time.”

*tobe continued......

Source of picture: prodigy3cupsoftea.pbworks.com

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