As Seen On TV

A small child sits alone on the curb, playing at putting a loose shoe back on his tiny foot - his mop of dark curly hair falls over his eyes as he glances up at a man walking past.
The man is nothing extraordinary, but catches the boy's eye as he strolls past him into the busy market, full of families shopping, peddlers selling their wares, children playing....he is any man, perhaps on his way to pick up a few things for a later lunch or taking a detour on the way to an appointment...
The little boy stands up to garner a better look at the tall, ordinarily attractive man who has now piqued his interest. Is it something in the way he is walking? Is it in his eyes?
No one else notices, busy with their own errands...and the boy, still holding the errant shoe in one hand, stands watching.
The camera pans out to reveal the larger market scene, focussing individually on a group of young boys footballing, a small girl laughing with her mother as they carry the morning's purchases, men, women, and children all woven together in a fabric of daily life.
The little boy, from under his dark curls, spies the man amid the crowds and with suddenly widened eyes watches as the man reaches up to quickly unzip his blue sweatshirt, revealing the unavoidable explosives - in a single moment there is nothing but fire and noise.
In a scene worthy of great Hollywood directors the viewer is offered a circular view of the area as cars burn, windows blow out, and human bodies tumble through the air, grimaces of pain and etches of screams clearly visible in the slowed motion.
After a 360 degree tour of the immediate destruction the camera slows to pause on the little girl who had seconds earlier laughed to her mother, now surrounded by debris, crying over her mother's body. An elderly woman crouches low to the ground, holding herself in pain and grasping helplessly at her husband who is trapped motionless beneath a burning car. A football, charred, rolls aimlessly into the gutter near an unmoving bloodied hand. Visits are made with each individual previously discovered at the opening of the scene, revealing death and pain and fear and panicked confusion.
Finally, one tiny blue sneaker falls to rest on a smoldering pile of what used to be a neighborhood, it's small brown-eyed owner nowhere to be found.

You know you're in the Middle East when the public service announcements don't address the old standards of fire safety, water conservation, senior issues, or child health but: suicide bombing.

On the Saudi Arabian television channels these ads run quite frequently in between those for Visa credit cards, sports drinks, and multi-billion dollar real-estate investment opportunities in Dubai.
It is captivating to watch, like a short film. And even when you've seen it a hundred times, and know what's coming, you watch anyway - hoping the boy will simply put on his shoe and run home, hoping the man - young with sharp, intelligent eyes, will make a different choice - but knowing the scene must play itself out as it has, is, and seemingly always will be.

It is a work of art in it's own right. And as many such things are, it is deeply disturbing.
But this is the reality of the world we live in - happy jingling PSA's for things like latchkey-kids and utilizing the local library services are long gone.