Aylan Kurdi (L) and his brother Galip pose in an undated photo provided by the Kurdi family. The two Syrian toddlers drowned with their mother and several other migrants as they tried to reach Greece. (Photo/Agencies)
A photograph of a Syrian refugee, resignation written large on his face, carrying his sleeping 4-year-old daughter while hawking pens on a street in Beirut, triggered an online campaign that raised about $108,551 in 24 hours a week ago. The good Samaritan who posted the photograph using the hashtag #buypens on the Internet was a Norwegian activist named Gissur Simonarson.
The distraught Syrian refugee, Abdul Halim Attar, with two daughters to care for, broke down when he heard the amount, and said he "was so thankful" and repeated, "I want to help other Syrians", wrote Simonarson. This was a good ending to what could have been another tragic story in the theater of war that is the Middle East.
But for every lucky refugee there are hundreds, if not thousands, of tragic souls.
One was called Aylan. He was a Syrian refugee, just three years old. His body, face down, was found on the beach of Bodrum, a resort city in Turkey on Wednesday. And he was one of at least 12 Syrians fleeing the war-torn country who drowned trying to reach the Greek island Kos. Among the victims are believed to be his 5-year-old brother Ghaleb and their mother, Rihana. The only one from the family to survive was Aylan's father, Abdullah Kurdi, who was found semi-conscious and hospitalized.
The photograph of Aylan has apparently done what the continuing horror stories and other photographs from war-torn Middle East and North Africa couldn't do: awaken humanity. Perhaps the hashtag #Kiyiya VuranInsanlik, which means "humanity washed ashore", has something to do with it.
But that is just part of the story. The outpouring of emotions on the Internet that Aylan has evoked with his death is the aftermath of a tragedy, which should never have played out the way it has.
