The West's branded care of children in the Middle East.

 When I see children in the grey, concrete cities of the Middle East—cities that have turned into heaps of rubble due to war and conflict—their heads adorned with fluffy headphones, their bodies draped in clothes patterned with popular cartoon characters, their feet encased in glittering shoes, and their hands clutching phones—phones handed to them under the pretense of “leaving their families alone”—instead of feeling any warmth, instead of some innocent flicker of human connection stirring within me, what awakens, what refuses to be quiet, is the image of the force responsible for all of this: the West.