David Oliver Relin uses ink to wage war against ignorance through his book, "Three Cups of Tea."

Sure, he tells the story about how a kind-hearted American mountain climber built a school for the people who saved his life in a remote Pakistani village.

And he tells how that same man, Greg Mortenson, has built 60 more schools, especially for girls, since 1993. He found ways to fund bridges, water systems and other infrastructure for isolated, poverty-stricken communities.

But Relin also writes about Mortenson's ability to build relationships with Muslim leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan and his self-sacrificial attempts to convince Americans financiers to help.

By telling the story, Relin is reducing the ignorance that prevents Americans and Pakistani and Afghan Muslims from understanding each other.

"The enemy is ignorance," Relin said in a recent phone interview, echoing the words of Pakistani Brigadier General Bashir Baz.

The ignorance Relin speaks of is not just that of Pakistanis or Afghanis who have never had the opportunity to attend school. He's also talking about Americans who know very little about the effect of our foreign policy there.

Relin will be speaking in Lancaster on Nov. 14 at the Junior League's author's luncheon. In his presentation, which is open to the public, he will continue breaking down the wall of ignorance through pictures and stories of his experiences in reporting on "Three Cups of Tea."

In a late October phone interview, Relin talked about an experience he had while reporting on the book that illustrates the ignorance he would like to reduce.

After Sept. 11, Relin said, he saw numerous television interviews in which "talking heads" tried to answer the question: "Why do they hate us?"

"I thought the phrasing was absurd," Relin said — "the fact that there was a they … and that we would presume that a quarter of the world's population (Muslims) would be lumped together and believe any one thing."

During one of his three visits to Pakistan to interview people for the book, Relin interviewed Syed Abbas Risvi, a supreme Shi'a cleric of Northern Pakistan. Accompanying Risvi were men with beards and turbans who fit the stereotypical American picture of terrorists.

After the interview with Risvi, who is one of Mortenson's staunch supporters, Risvi's son wanted to know if he could ask a potentially insulting question.

At Relin's invitation, Risivi's son asked, "Why do Americans hate us?"

Halfway across the world, talking to the people being stereotyped by Americans, Relin was hearing the same misunderstandings.

"I said, 'Americans don't hate you. The American people don't understand you. The more we can have this kind of individual contact, the more we can break that misunderstanding.' "

One of Relin's predominant motivations in writing "Three Cups of Tea," he said, was to help readers see individuals and to hear the voices of moderate Muslims, who make up the majority of the believers of Islam.

Relin's understanding of other cultures and issues of human rights began long before Mortenson asked him to write the book.

While he was growing up in Rochester, N.Y., during the civil rights era, Relin's parents made him aware of racial inequities by reading books like Richard Wright's "Black Boy." He was fascinated, too, by protests against the Vietnam War.

In high school he was active in the Model United Nations, a simulation in which students play the role of a United Nations member and debate current issues. One of his roles was to represent Iran during the 1979-1981 hostage crisis.

For his college graduation present from Vassar, Relin's parents gave him a plane ticket to anywhere in the world. He chose India.

He bought a World War II-era Royal Enfield motorcycle, and spent the fall riding around India. The bike frequently broke down, and he experienced the hospitality of some of the world's poorest people.

The more he traveled, including bicycling the length of Vietnam, the more he became aware of the world's inequities and the more motivated he was to write about them.

As a young writer he took to heart the words of writer Grace Paley, who said, according to Relin: " 'It's the duty of the writer to listen to the stories of the powerless and to tell their stories to the powerful.' "

Relin embraced that job description as he wrote about child soldiers, hungry children in America and illegal immigrant children held in maximum security prisons.

Relin's sensitivities to injustice and familiarity with Muslim people and customs, and Mortenson's work to alleviate injustice in Pakistan, made them a natural match for "Three Cups of Tea."

Lee Kravitz, editor of Parade magazine, recognized their compatibility and introduced them in his office. The two men spoke for several hours before Mortenson asked Relin to write the book about his work.

"I can't imagine anything more important," Relin remembers telling Mortenson.

Mortenson was addressing the root causes that lead to terrorism — poverty and ignorance, Relin said, not just chasing after the symptoms, in the form of Osama bin Laden and potential connections with Saddam Hussein.

"If you address those (root causes) positively, if you provide education and business opportunities and draw them into the modern world, everything changes," Relin said.

"In order to make things better, we need to offer people hope. We need to wage peace. We need to educate children. We need to offer non-extremist education," Relin said.

Now that "Three Cups of Tea" has been on the New York Times' Best Seller's List for 89 weeks (as of Oct. 24), Relin has had many opportunities to inform audiences about the power of Mortenson's example.

He emphasizes that, like Mortenson, one person really can change the world. Many people tell him they already have changed something about their lives and their careers after reading the book, he said.

For Relin, writing "Three Cups of Tea" was the culmination of 20 years of international reporting and another example of the fulfillment of his purpose as a writer.

I'm a storyteller who has some ability to make the struggle of people around the world real, to put faces on some of the problems that can be overwhelming when you just think about them generally, like poverty, hunger and injustice

"I found that's a pretty good job," Relin said.

• To learn more about "Three Cups of Tea" and Greg Mortenson's mission, visit www.threecupsoftea.com, or www.ikat.org — the Central Asia Institute, Greg Mortenson's nonprofit organization.

Author's Luncheon with David Oliver Relin, writer of "Three Cups of Tea." Includes author's presentation and book signing. Friday, Nov. 14. Doors open at 11 a.m.; luncheon at noon. Cash bar available. Eden Resort Inn & Suites, 222 Eden Road. Tickets: $60, available only at www.jllancaster.org.

E-mail: lespenshade@lnpnews.com