When They Become the Strangers

There’s this thing I’ve noticed people do when they’re scared: they find someone who looks different and blame them for whatever change they don’t want. Refugees, immigrants, accents, wrong clothes, wrong religion. It’s simpler than admitting you just want everything to stay the same.

So they demand their leaders protect them. Build walls. Keep those people out. And leaders listen because it’s what keeps them in power. They make speeches about security and stability, and everyone gets what they want: the scared people feel safe, the leaders stay in office.

But what if it flipped? What if Angela Merkel woke up in a refugee camp instead of a palace? What if Donald Trump had to stand in a line for asylum papers? What if Vladimir Putin had nothing left but the clothes on his back and a story no one believed?

That’s what the Syrian artist Abdalla Al Omari decided to explore. He reimagined the world’s most powerful leaders as refugees—displaced, desperate, standing outside the doors they used to guard. He didn’t make them sympathetic. He made them impossible to ignore. Because now the suffering you’ve been comfortable letting happen has a face you actually know.

I don’t know if Omari thought his work would change anyone’s mind. I don’t know if that kind of art ever does. But the image sticks. The question lingers. For a moment, the desperation you’ve been trained to dismiss wears a face you recognize.