The Things You Can’t Forget: My First Encounter with a Child Suicide Bomber
There are certain things in this world that shouldn’t exist, things too grotesque to be real, too monstrous to comprehend. But there I was, standing in the middle of the rubble, staring at something that should never be. A boy. Barely 7 or 8 years old. He wasn’t even old enough to grow into the kind of man who would ever make a real choice, but he was standing there in front of me—shaking, his body wrapped in the vest of his impending doom. You’d think I would’ve seen it coming. I should’ve known, right? We’d been through enough of this godforsaken war to recognize the signs, the whispers in the wind, the quiet before the storm. But this time, it hit me harder than anything ever had. He was just a kid. His face was smudged with dirt, eyes wide, mouth trembling like he couldn’t even process what was happening to him. And there he stood, in the middle of that dusty hellhole, the one thing I never thought I’d see— child soldiers —but this one… this one was different. He wasn’t armed. No...