I don’t know his name.

I don’t know who he is.

An old man, his face deeply lined, etched with the features of the southern land. His blue eyes brimming, with tears rolling down his cheeks as he stood alone at the door of a pharmacy.

The image of that lone man stopped me.

I walked up & asked him why he was crying. Trying to hold on to his dignity, he quietly admitted he was short five dollars for a medicine he desperately needed.

Two women arrived moments later. Together we told him he was not alone. That we are all in this together.

The medicine was paid for. A little extra cash was placed in his hands.

Tonight that image stayed with me.

More than the horrors I have seen.

More than the endless images of destruction.

It was this old man, crying over five dollars, that finally cracked me.

It was something so small.

An old man crying over five dollars.

And yet in that moment he became the face of the tens of thousands displaced & left destitute by Israel’s vicious war.