Well, my wife's father is from India. He was educated by the Brits there and so spoke multiple languages. After finishing his schooling he took a job teaching in Pakistan. The United States had sent a spy to Pakistan to keep an eye on things there. I would say, this was late 1950s. My father-in-law to supplement his income also took tutoring jobs, mainly for the rich and famous there because they were the ones that could afford to hire tutors for their kids. He spoke several languages and was a well sought after tutor. In course of doing this he met an American one night at a ritzy party. The American was quite impressed that my father-in-law spoke all of these local dialects and English, so he asked him if he wanted a job. He said yes. At first the job was listening to tapes of people speaking at various meetings and translating what they said, including how they may have said these things and what they meant by it.
He was doing such a great job that the American asked him to start coming to events with him, as his assistant and in real time letting him know what was being said and what he noticed about how the people that were saying these things were acting. It became quite the partnership.
What basically happened was the Muslims in charge in Pakistan (which essentially means Pure Land) would go on purification killing sprees, killing Hindus and Christians. My father-in-law was a Christian and so, a warning was issued that one of these killing sprees was going to begin shortly and my father-in-law's American spy friend, knew my father-in-law was on the death list. In most cases, this meant you were going to end up dead. You could run, he could ask a wealthy family to hide him, but at that time in Pakistan you would almost certainly be killed. His friend, Bill, the American spy, came immediately, collected my father-in-law and got him on the plane with him out of the country. He saved his life.
He then got my father-in-law to the United States, setting him up at Wooster College in Ohio as a student. It kind of amuses me that what he wanted him to do was to study geology with the intent of putting him in the oil business. You can probably let your mind run with why that was where a guy with the CIA wanted to place this guy that spoke a bunch of languages and was this little brown skinned man.
They ended up being lifelong friends. Hilariously, at one point a guy was harassing my wife when she was a teenager. He was an older guy in his 20s. He would bully her and she was really frightened of him. He would just come to their house and try to barge in telling her parents to stay the hell out of his way he was going to take her away and marry her...at like 15 mind you. My father-in-law happened to mention this to Bill during one of their chats. I guess, Bill said he was coming by the house and wanted to take my father-in-law for a drive to discuss this. So, he picks him up and they drive off into the forests of the Poconos. They are having a normal chat but once out in the middle of nowhere, Bill stops the car in the forest. He says to my father-in-law, I can solve this problem with your daughter being harassed and he picks up a pillow that was sitting on the seat between them. Under it is a pistol. He says "I can do this one of two ways. I can talk to him and he will never bother your daughter again, or I can make it so nobody ever sees him again. Your choice."
This frightened my father-in-law and so he said "No, no, Bill we can take care of this. You don't have to do anything." and the Bill says "Calm down, it will be fine. Nobody would ever know what happened. He would disappear without a trace."
One of my regrets was I never got to meet this guy before he passed. I believe we have a book he wrote though, here in the house. Oddly, it is a book of love poems he composed when he fell in love with an Indian woman he met while he was in Pakistan.
