In 1991, I was called back to Chicago to work on a project for the Chicago Board of Trade, to create an electronic trading system for futures contracts and options. I designed the matching portion on the “mainframe” and the communication protocols and messaging for the network. My partner was in charge of designing the workstation for the traders and the server infrastructure. I had 4 or 5 people working for me, and he had about 7 Unix type computer geeks working for him.
The reason for this story is to discourage you from thinking Pakistanis are Afghan goat herders. His group was your typical Chicago liberal rabble, including a very “butch” lesbian, although I would admit not realizing that right away. He was very good at leading his group of people and keeping them focused on their part of the project. He and I were the main comtact between the two groups to resolve issues, but there were few because my design was perfect 😉
Not having any prior contact with a Pakistani or Muslim, I worked the edges to learn the boundaries. His English was flawless with no trace of an accent. His dress was normal American. If he was wearing any jewelry, the message was lost on me. I asked about his background, and he explained that his family came from a part of Asia where every so often another group of people would come through and conquer people and intermarry. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure he was Pashtun – the northern part of Pakistan up toward Afghanistan who really don’t want to be ruled by the ethnic Indians put in charge by the British.
I asked him about the difficulty of needing to pray to Mecca and what, if anything, I needed to know. He indicate there are provisions for the rules when situations didn’t make that practical and not to worry about it. We completed the system on a frugal budget and rolled it out on time. It languished for several years because while the CFTC and FBI liked the idea, the floor traders did not.
My last memory of him was staying late the final night wrapping things up, and not realizing we had missed the last subway for the night, and standing together on an empty El platform on Lasalle Street for half an hour. Once we realized our mistake, we walked together over to the State Street subway around 10:30 PM.
It’s much easier to hate people when you don’t know them. One of the more memorable moments was when we wandered into the topic of Indians. He was moderately sensitive to people who treated him differently because of being Muslim, but he blurted out “Those Hindus breed like rabbits and need to stop having so many children!” Hokey-Dokey 😉 I’ never sure how to react to things like that, whether they are a provocation intended to elicit a “you shouldn’t say that!” response or a genuine emotion hoping for support… I tend to change the subject 😉
My father in the 80’s worked with many Indian and Pakistani doctors in the V.A. system in our small city. He felt that the Muslims he worked with had a fairly rigid sense of right and wrong that was akin to his, and that they tended to state what they thought was true rather than what was expedient.
Agreed. I don’t get that same sense about some Hindu Indians, although I may be picking up regional or caste differences. Probably as part of passive resistance to British colonial rule, many Indians will lie to you and deliberately mislead you. “I need this done by Friday – can you do that?”. “Yes!”
“Yes” doesn’t mean “I understand what you want and I will do it” – “yes” merely means I’m acknowledging you told me something, not agreement. If you don’t follow up Yes with “OK, tell me what you you think I asked you to do” you’ll find out way too late they just pretended to know what to do. I’ve worked for two companies that flushed big money and more importantly lost opportunities by “saving money” outsourcing computer work to India. There are good Indian programmers, but they can’t be on the other side of the planet.