Cairo: Tucked between other stores on a famous shopping promenade in central Cairo, one shop has something strikingly bizarre and controversial about it.
It would not take one a long time to recognise the shocking difference.
The garment store, situated on the pedestrian-only Shawarbi Street, displays on its facade the name of Hitler along with the Nazi Swastika.
The 'Hitler' store in Cairo.
The store owner, Osama Farouq, insists on the innocuousness of the signs despite the backlash he has received from local and foreign pedestrians since he started his business in the street, nicknamed Cairo’s Champs-Elysees.
“The name and the emblem drew my admiration so I decided to put them up on the front of my store,” Farouk told Gulf News.
Stunned at the store name, several Egyptians and foreigners have chided Farouq. Some of them, according to him, have spat at the glass display window of the shop in a show of protest, with at least one trying to remove the sign. Farouq holds on to his ground, though.
“The matter does not deserve all this fuss. It’s just a name. Why are people so angry? I have nothing to do with politics,” the young man said, handing a copy of his business card that carries a photo of Adolf Hitler on one side and the Swastika on the other.
Hitler, one of the most ruthless dictators in European history, ruled Germany for 12 years until 1945. His policies sparked the World War II and the Nazi Holocaust, resulting in deaths of millions.
Farouq denies that the Hitler-linked furore has negatively affected his business.
“Praise be to God, I have my own clients who come to the store because of the fine quality of my goods,” he said.
“I am not a communist or a person with a stony heart. I’m a Muslim who believes in one God,” the man in his twenties added as he turned up the volume of a religious TV station telecasting recorded verses from the Quran.
