Many years ago now my boss called me into his office and said the firm had a project that needed a little guidance and I should go work on it: "It will be good for your career." Partner-speak for: "If you don't want to work on this, you won't have a career." After I'd been on site for a week and gone over the project plans, I called up my boss.
"Hey boss, I've got some good news and bad news."
"First the good news, the project is really worthwhile and doable."
"The bad news. You guys blew the bid and are gonna lose a ton of money on the contract. The geniuses who bid this thing have fallen into the "nine-women-can't-have-a-baby-in-one-month" trap ... and they haven't even hired the nine women, yet."
(I could have completed the metaphor with "your current project manager [who wasn't me] doesn't even know the facts of life." Never mind that the client required that the work be done using a Datacom database, which had its own proprietary programming language. "You need to find a whole bunch of women who code in IDEAL." High tech, then)
"Thanks for the suicide mission."
"Don't worry we'll take care of you."
("Ha! You and the rest of the nincompoops who got us into this mess won't be around to help anyone. You'll all be forced to retire... and they were ... except for the one who died of a heart attack first)
Globally renown firm bit the bullet. Reputation was worth more than a 10-20 million loss and a contract dispute probably would cost more than completing the project... a lot more.
We cast a net far and wide for IDEAL/Datacom people ... literally across the planet. We pulled in a brilliant black woman who was an IDEAL/Datacom expert and about to become very rich, her friend who programmed in IDEAL, claimed to be a good witch and had six-inch long fingernails, an ex-Colgate football player who could do a standing jump onto the top of a conference room table, and Ali.
Ali was the guy you pray will show up on a project... smart, dead serious about work, smart, highly experienced, smart and possessed of traditional manners. The son of a high ranking Iranian military officer, Ali had been sent to America for school and stayed. It was the middle of the Iran-Iraq war.
"Ali, are you worried about your dad back home? Aren't old-regime military officers in danger?"
"No. My father is a physician, a very respected man. His skills are in great need at home now."
If I could ask Ali about the Crusader Controversy, this response would probably be number one on the hit parade:
"Serious people shouldn't worry about that sort of thing and it would be rude for me to comment."
He might also have answered:
"What's a crusader?" or
"I'm a Turkish Sunni whose family lives in Persia with the Shia. Apparent from it being rude, it's imprudent to complain that someone's beloved icons are idolatrous. Too much Sunni and Shia blood has already been shed over that."
Ali's encounter with the Irish was just as intriguing and fraught with danger. At college he met a beautiful, bewitching Irish-Catholic young woman and married her. His family must have been bewildered. If I could have traveled back in time, I'd have asked him if he really thought it wise.
"Ali, are you sure you want to do this? You're a serious, conservative, traditional, patriarchal guy. You're wife's an Irish-Catholic woman. I love 'em. I have a family full of them. But the one thing they hate more than the British is patriarchy. They weren't fleeing the Famine when they left Ireland. They were fleeing the village priest and arranged marriages to bossy old farmers."
At Ali's memorial service, his wife approached me and announced:
"You know Ali and I got divorced."
"No..." I said, lying feeling it might be rude to let on that people were talking about it.
"Funny. I stayed on at our business after the divorce. We got along much better after we split."
