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Ellis was crushed. The operation was scheduled for March 10. He had a week, at best, to purchase the property. "But I got it done," he says. "The thing is, the people really wanted the school opened and they helped me find the owners." There was one pair of owners who demanded $20,000 for their land. "I told them $2,000 max," Ellis said, but ultimately the owners - after checking around - changed their minds and decided to offer the land for free. "They said, 'We'll give it to you, but could you beat us up a little...
Ellis knocked on the door of the compound in question, and a young man named Habib Rahman answered. We entered a remarkably pleasant courtyard, surrounded by windowed rooms, shaded by grape arbors and balconies. It was clearly one of the more prosperous homes in town, but the source of the prosperity was a mystery. Rahman said his grandfather, who built the place, and his father were both dead. He lived there with his mother, grandmother, aunt and two sisters...
...thin rugs, beneath one of the balconies. Ellis took off his helmet and deftly, gently, always smiling, questioned Rahman. He didn't ask anything very direct, like how Rahman - who said he was 17 - earned a living, and the boy didn't volunteer any information. Ellis asked who the most powerful person in town was, and Rahman answered, "Hajji Lala." He asked who the most powerful Taliban in town was, and the boy said he didn't know. "Yeah, I wouldn't know, either, if I were you," Ellis said. (See TIME's photo-essay "A Soldier's Final Journey...
...next afternoon, Ellis received word from battalion: there would be another delay, ostensibly of five days, but Ellis knew it would be longer than that. The Canadian bomb-disposal unit couldn't wait around. It had to go on to other projects. "This is becoming a joke," said one of the troopers who escorted me out of Combat Outpost Senjaray the following day. "It ain't gonna happen...
...quake, which struck the Tibetan plateau at 7:49 a.m., is one of the largest recorded in the immediate area, which is rife with seismic activity. The May 12, 2008, Sichuan earthquake, which killed 87,000, was centered about 375 miles (600 km) to the southeast of the Qinghai temblor. So far at least 11 schools have collapsed in Qinghai, and the number of dead students stands at 66, with dozens more trapped, provincial education secretary Wang Yubo said. Two years ago as many as 6,000 students died in collapsed classrooms in Sichuan. The anger of their parents, some...