Character Analysis
Mortenson meets a few other people on his journey up and down mountains, over gorges, and across deserts, although none of them are important enough to warrant a whole section to themselves and most of them practically blend together after a while.
Some of them are heroes, like Hussain, the man who is just as skilled at hunting as he is at teaching; Faisal Baig, George McCown's guide who later serves as Mortenson's personal bodyguard; and Syed Abbas Rivsi, "the type of religious leader [Mortenson] admire[s] most" (16.20). Rivsi agrees with Mortenson's mission to educate, but he expands the vision to include clean drinking water—after all, if the kids are sick and dying they can't go to school.
Some other characters are like minor villains to provide a little conflict to Mortenson's narrative. There's Janjungpa, from Khane, who swears that Mortenson promised to build a climbing school in his small village and tries to secure Mortenson's resources for himself, and Yakub, who ends up chaining himself to a school because he's not put in charge of it.
Finally, there are a few Americans who seem to exist in the book purely for name droppings' sake, like congresswoman Mary Bono; George McCown, an American who helps Mortenson with his fundraising; and Julia Bergman, who is blonde. Oh, she's also a librarian who supplies Mortenson's schools with books, but we're always told she's blonde as though that's her most important trait.