Abdul Halim al-Attar: From Selling Pens in Beirut to Three Businesses

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Refugee who used to sell pens in Lebanon founds 3 businesses with donated $190,000

Photo: generosity.com campaign page

Abdul Halim al-Attar was the man in one of 2015's most shared photographs: a tired father selling ballpoint pens to drivers in Beirut while his small daughter slept on his shoulder. Strangers online turned that image into a crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $190,000. Within months he had opened a bakery, a kebab shop and a small restaurant in the Lebanese capital and was giving work to other Syrian refugees.

His story became a symbol of what social media can do at its best. It is also a reminder of how complicated even a happy ending can be for a refugee without papers, without a bank account and without a country that fully recognises him.

Who is Abdul Halim al-Attar?

When his photo went viral he was 33 years old and a single father of two: a son, Abdullelah, then about nine, and a daughter, Reem, about four. Before the war he made chocolate at a sweets factory in Damascus and lived in Yarmouk, a district on the southern edge of the city that had grown out of a settlement built in 1957 for Palestinian refugees.

That detail matters. Although he came from Syria, al-Attar is Palestinian and, according to NBC News, has no Syrian citizenship. Yarmouk had been the largest Palestinian community in Syria, home to well over 100,000 people. Fighting reached it in 2012, a long siege followed, and by 2018 much of it lay in ruins. Al-Attar fled to Lebanon in 2012, one of the more than a million Syrian refugees the small country took in.

In Beirut he had no work permit and few options. He walked between lanes of traffic selling pens, often carrying Reem because there was no one to look after her.

The photo and the #BuyPens campaign

In the summer of 2015, Gissur Simonarson, a web developer and online journalist based in Oslo, saw the photograph on social media. He set up a Twitter account, @Buy_Pens, to find the man, and with the help of Lebanese journalist Carol Malouf he did. Together they launched an online fundraiser with a modest goal of $5,000.

The target was reached within about half an hour, CNN reported. Nearly $80,000 arrived in the first day, and the total eventually passed $190,000 from donors around the world. The campaign page was titled "Help Abdul and Reem start a new life".

From street corner to three businesses

Rather than keep the money in cash, al-Attar invested it. By late 2015 he had opened a bakery, then added a kebab shop and a small restaurant, all in Beirut. NBC News reported that the businesses employed 16 Syrian refugees and that he had sent about $25,000 to friends and relatives still in Syria. A later CNN report described two restaurants employing 24 refugees, which suggests the businesses kept changing as he found his footing.

He explained the choice simply. Holding on to the money, he felt, was a risk in itself: I had to invest the money, otherwise it will be lost.

The family's daily life changed too. He moved his children out of a single shared room into a two-bedroom flat in southern Beirut, and his son went back to school after three years out of the classroom.

The complications behind the headline

Crowdfunding a refugee is not as simple as clicking "donate". Lebanon was not served by PayPal at the time, and al-Attar had no ordinary way to receive international transfers. A friend in Dubai collected the funds and carried them over in small amounts. After Indiegogo and payment fees of roughly $20,000, he had received only about 40% of the money by December 2015.

Simonarson later admitted the payout problems had been so draining that it might be his last fundraiser. The difficulties did not mean the campaign failed, but they show how banking rules, fees and legal status can slow help down even when the public responds generously.

Al-Attar's personal life was not untouched either. NBC reported that his wife had returned to Syria and that the couple were separated.

What his life looked like afterwards

By the end of 2015 his businesses were roughly breaking even, with steady orders of bread and shawarma from workers and families in Beirut's working-class neighbourhoods. He told reporters that the greatest change was not only financial: people treated him with more respect, and he could support others. As NBC News reported, he summed it up this way: Not only did my life change, but also the lives of my children and the lives of people in Syria whom I helped.

Asked by CNN why he had kept smiling while selling pens on the street, he gave a short answer that many readers remembered: God had given him that smile.

Why this story still matters

The #BuyPens campaign worked because it connected one recognisable person with thousands of people who wanted to do something concrete. It also showed the limits of that model. Most refugees never have a photo go viral, and in 2014 the International Labour Organization found that only about a third of Syrian refugees in Lebanon had any kind of work.

For readers who want to help, a few lessons stand out:

  • Check who runs a campaign and whether the money can actually reach the person named.
  • Consider established organisations such as UNHCR or local charities, which can support many families at once and handle legal and banking hurdles.
  • Remember the long term. Work, schooling and legal status often matter more than a single payment.

Al-Attar's journey, from a Palestinian camp in Damascus to a pen-seller's patch of pavement in Beirut and then to his own shop counter, is one of the brighter stories to come out of the Syrian war. It began with a stranger who decided not to scroll past a photograph.

Sources: NBC News: Syrian refugee in viral photo now running three businesses; CNN: the pen seller of Beirut; Wikipedia: Yarmouk Camp. Header photo via generosity.com; embedded tweets by Gissur Simonarson, Carol Malouf and Omar Hamid.

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