Cairo
– The garment store, situated on the pedestrian-only Shawarbi Street, displays
on its facade the name of Hitler along with the Nazi Swastika.
The
store owner, Osama Farouq, insists on the innocuous 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.
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.
