His name was Aylan, or humanity washed ashore

A photograph of a Syrian refugee, resignation writ 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.