Do I Know Hitler

Living in Abu Dhabi can sometimes make some of the most mundane situations interesting. The maintenance man in our apartment block is a very jovial Bangladeshi man. His name is Shakedir and he is extremely helpful and competent. A few days ago he came in to do a few chores for me.

As usual he regaled me with stories of his life in "the Towers". This day's story was about one of the residents, a doctor, who had asked him to do some work and who then denied anything of the sort when Shakedir got into trouble for doing the work. A simple story, but long in the telling and difficult to get the gist of because of Shakedir's version of the English language.

After the story about the doctor there was a pause in the conversation. Shakedir then stopped what he was doing for a moment, looked at me and asked "Do you know Hitler?" I was a bit taken aback by this diversion from stories about the joys of working in "the Towers" and did not, for a few seconds, know how to answer that question.

To put things into perspective Hitler is not a monster in this part of the world. Mein Kampf is freely available in bookstores along with other anti-Semitic publications banned in most countries of the Western world. So bearing this in mind I replied "Yeeeees I know Hitler". I wanted to say "Not personally though.", but I thought the sarcasm would be lost on him.
'Well," he said, "when British mothers want to scare their children they say Hitler is coming. Do you know what Bangladeshi mothers say when they want to scare their children?" By this stage I was desperate to know what Bangladeshi mothers say to scare their children and I said so. He looked at me quite solemnly and said "They say the Pakistanis are coming."

This story was not quite random. He went on to tell me how as a child of 11 he had lived through the troubled birth of his nation and its independence from Pakistan. It was a sad story and testament to his strength of character that he is the man he is today.

It is very sad that children have to grow up with fear of oppressors. As per Shakedir's example our parents and grandparents grew up fearing Hitler. I was fortunate growing up in the 1950's. It was a peaceful time with no apparent enemies so we had to borrow bad guys from our parents and other cultures. I am sure a game of Cowboys and Indians would not have generated the kind of fear that "Hitler is coming" would have done to kids growing up in Britain in the 1940s or "The Pakistanis are coming" would have done to kids growing up in Bangladesh in the 1970s.

The sad thing is today our grandchildren could be similarly scared if we were to day to them "the Terrorists are coming."