His daughter Reem, 4, slept in his arms while he held out his hand offering pens to passersby in Beirut. Abdul Halim al-Attar, 33, a Palestinian who had fled Yarmouk — the refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus where he worked in a chocolate factory — survived that way on the streets of Lebanon. Someone took a photo of him in the summer of 2015. And that image split the world in two.
Gissur Simonarson, a Norwegian journalist and co-founder of Conflict News, launched the #BuyPens campaign on Twitter with an initial goal of $5,000. What came next was unprecedented: within weeks, people from all over the planet donated $191,000. Abdul Halim did not believe it until he saw it. With that money he opened a bakery, a kebab shop and a small restaurant in Beirut. He also allocated about $25,000 to relatives and friends who were still trapped in Syria.
Today, the man who sold pens to feed his children employs 16 Syrian refugees who, like him, needed an opportunity. Sometimes one photo is enough to remind the world of what it is capable of when it decides to act.
