An eye for a refugee.

One night in 2014, in Raqqa, Syria, 13-year-old M* headed out the door to go pray in the local mosque. “Wait, wait!” his sister-in-law called. “Help my brother move this rug first.” As they struggled with a heavy carpet they heard a plane, then an explosion. The strike hit the building next door. An instant later it came for them. M was the only survivor.

His father found him, just sitting there, shaking, and carried him to the hospital. He spent months there, getting multiple, painful surgeries. His right eye, pierced with shrapnel, couldn’t be saved.

He was fitted with a prosthetic eye, which droops to the side. It looks a little strange but does the trick. The oculist even managed to approximate his unusual eye color, a striking bright green.

A week ago the prosthetic broke and he badly needs a replacement. M* is now a refugee in Europe, where the cost of replacing the prosthetic is far beyond what he can afford (he’s there legally but doesn’t have the right status for a subsidy). The specialist who originally treated him is one of the only doctors familiar with his case, and accessing that care requires travel that he can’t afford on his own.

The empty socket can get dry, inflamed. It’s painful. There’s risk of a dangerous infection. Over time, the eye cavity tightens or collapses, making prosthetics difficult to place in the future. It can lead to permanent facial asymmetry. And there’s the psychological impact: he’s been homebound, except to go to work, ashamed of his empty socket, and working seven days a week to save money for a prosthetic. He still owes money for his border crossing and this sets him back immeasurably.

Would you consider a donation?

Everyone is well aware there’s no shortage of horrors right now. You can’t give to every stranger with a problem. I myself have clicked away from fundraisers for situations far more dire: sometimes with guilt, sometimes numbed by the endless stream of tragedy, always considering the state of my bank account given the collapse of journalism. But M’s eye is such an easily fixable problem—if you want to and can afford to contribute money to help, it would be amazing. If so shoot me an email at tganeva@gmail.com or hit me up in the comments, happy to work with Zelle, Revolut, pretty much any cash transfer app. I will, obviously, provide any proof you’d like that the funds made it towards M’s eye.

M is actually in a book I’m writing. It tells my family’s Cold War refugee history. It talks about Abdulrahman Al-Khalidi, a Saudi prison reform activist, who took part in the Arab Spring and is now sitting in jail in Bulgaria after seeking refugee status. It seems from the comments that quite a few people enjoyed Al-Khalidi beautiful reflection on Christmas and refugees: Far From the Palaces of Empires and Their Splendor.

And it profiles three contemporary Syrian refugees, including M*, in our current, shocking, appalling, hideous, nightmare moment where refugees, migrants, and even fucking legal immigrants (that are the only reason poor rural America has doctors) are demonized, shamelessly, all over the globe.

I never thought the U.S. and Europe—the vaunted peak of “Judeo-Christian culture” (please)—would get this ugly. Let’s hope for a 2026 radical backlash. In the meantime, here’s a small thing that can be fixed.