Refugee

“Mahmoud Bishara was invisible, and that’s exactly how he wanted it. Being invisible was how he survived.”

The factions in Mahmoud’s native Syria make his conclusion a valid one. He only manages to survive by staying off everyone’s radar. Much later in the story, he learns that visibility has its benefits too.

“Wearing that uniform turned boys into monsters. Josef had seen it happen.”

Josef is talking about the Hitler Youth movement. In a general sense, many other kinds of uniforms turn people into monsters. The same could be said of Brownshirts, Cuban policemen, and Hungarian border guards.

“He hated that man. Hated him because of everything he’d done to the Jews, but mostly because of what Hitler had done to his father.”

Ideology, as a theoretical construct, can’t generate a strong emotional response. Hitler’s poisonous beliefs only become meaningful when they are applied to a familiar group of people. A negative emotional reaction to his ideas only becomes visceral when Josef’s father is the victim.