You saw the image of the dead Syrian child washed up on the shores of Bodrum in southwest Turkey this past week. How could you not have? The whole world saw it.

My mother saw it. She messaged on Friday. The photo had a powerful effect on her. It really drove home the reality of the Syrian refugee crisis, as it probably did for many people. What can we in America do to help, she asked?

Good question. What can anyone do to help?

I was affected by the image of the dead boy as much as anyone. It got me thinking, how did the situation ever get this far out of control?

For those of us living in this part of the world, the civil war just over the border in Syria has been creeping closer and closer for years now. The footsteps of the unfortunate refugees, on their weary journey, have become louder and louder.

At first, there were reports of demonstrations (back in 2011? I’m trying to remember exactly when), and the pro-government forces fighting against them. Then you began to read of refugees spilling over the border, not just in Turkey but in the other neighboring countries, like Jordan and Lebanon. The Turkish government built camps along the border to house the refugees.

Soon, the number of Syrians living in Turkey swelled to a 1 million, maybe even more. Inevitably, they began to spread beyond the border camps.

Then, one morning, I was on my way to work on the Asian side of the city. Walking along Rihtim Caddesi, the waterfront avenue, I caught my first look at the Syrian refugees in the flesh. They were families, not headlines. They were sitting on the sidewalk with cardboard signs. Hastily scrawled messages told you that they were from Syria, and that they needed help. The families were all tired, rumpled, desperate looking, and most of the Istanbulus on their way to work that morning hardly paid them any attention.

That evening, coming home from work, I came out of the metro and saw families camped out, huddled, hear a little overpass. The mothers had hung laundry from some bushes, and their children were playing in the grass. Most of the women were covered, with colorful headscarves, and they sat heavily on pieces of flattened cardboard, or on dirty blankets, keeping one eye on their children and the other alert for passersby.

Unfortunately for them, a big city like Istanbul always has its share of the misfortunate. Here, the gypsies have long held the streets. I remember one of my first evenings in Kadikoy, sitting at a cafe and having a beer, and a gypsy mother walked up, an infant buried in her arms, and she went from table to table with a pitiful, outstretched hand. Most of the Istanbulus, long accustomed to such scenes, barely even looked at the gypsy woman and her child. They went on with their dinner and socializing, pointedly ignoring her, until a waiter politely hissed her away, and she wearily dragged her child and sad story on to the next cafe.

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The Syrian families have had to compete on the streets of Istanbul, compete with misery upon misery. I can think of no greater tragedy than that: when your suffering, your misfortune, is but the latest of countless others, some of whom have been suffering much longer than you. When your tragedy, at the end of the day, is merely a statistic, a resigned shrug.

That boy who washed up this past week in Bodrum: thanks to that gruesome image of his little corpse laying in the surf, the whole world knows his name, Aylan. But what of the thousands of others who have drowned while making the dangerous, desperate boat crossings across the Aegean to Europe? What were their names? What of those stuck in border camps, or those who have managed to survive the dangerous trips, made it to Europe, only to find they are not wanted there either? For example, in Budapest this past week we read of a stand-off between migrants and the Hungarian government, which is not allowing the migrants to pass through the country to their preferred destination in Germany.

Meanwhile, in Europe, EU leaders are scrambling to find places to put all these people, and arguing with each other over limits and quotas. Here in Turkey, residents in many cities grow increasingly tired of the refugees – in some places, Syrian refugees outnumber the local population.

The photo of little Aylan – his mother and brother were also drowned, when their boat bound for Europe capsized – has become, for most people, an iconic image of not only the Syrian refugee crisis, but also the inability of governments to adequately deal with it. The Syrian people, desperate to escape the civil war in their country, and to find sanctuary abroad, have taken their destinies into their own hands. They place their hopes in the hands of illegal traffickers, who (over) load them onto small boats, or place them in the holds of ships, ready to dump some of them overboard if they run into coastal patrols.

Some observers, including myself, have compared the Syrians to Steinbeck’s spiritual Oakies, who fled the Dustbowl in Oklahoma in the 1930s, only to find further misfortune in their promised land of California. The difference is that with the Okies, their plight was economic rather than political. They were fleeing starvation, and were being driven off their lands by greedy bankers. Reading “The Grapes of Wrath,” you sensed that the Okies were victims of not only nature, but a bottom-line economic system that has little patience or compassion for a guy down on his luck. You want to blame someone, but who do you blame? The banks? The government? The farmers themselves, who perhaps created the Dust Bowl themselves from over-farming? The opportunistic, antagonistic land owners in California who readily exploited the Okies as cheap labor? There are a lot of places to point the finger.

With the Syrians, you can’t help but feel at times that their tragedy is much simpler, and that the blame lies with the arrogance and hubris of one man: the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, whose harsh treatment of the anti-government protesters in the beginning led to this terrible civil war which shows no signs of ending.

But human tragedy is seldom simple. We could blame the international community, which many have said dragged its feet in dealing with al-Assad, for being too tentative in its approach to the ever-worsening situation in Syria, for being short-sighted in how the problems of one country could soon become those of a whole region, and now, the world at large.

What’s to be done, my mother asks? How can anybody help?

While we search for answers, we are left with the image of the dead child, Aylan, washed up on the beach in Bodrum. It’s too late for him. His fate was decided long ago, when the civil war began, when his family was forced to flee and make a desperate crossing – his fate, and so many others.

In all likelihood, on the way to work on this morning, I will come across these others, parents and their children, on the streets of Istanbul. If it is true that child is the father of man, then these people are now Aylan’s children. Their fates are tied to his; they have been from the beginning. They are trying to get somewhere, anywhere, and they’ll do almost anything to get there.

I could offer something, some pocket change perhaps, but there’s only so much pocket change to give, and far too many families, with more on the way.

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In our neighborhood there’s a pleasant outdoor café where my wife and I like to go in the evenings. We sit out on the deck, drink beer, and relax in the twilight. Our regular waiter, Baron, is a nice guy. He’s in his late twenties, well-educated and speaks English, as well as a bit of French.

I’d always assumed he was Turkish, but the other night we got to talking, and it turns out he’s a Syrian from Damascus, the capital city. There he was involved in the theater. These days, he’s waiting tables in Istanbul, serving drinks, greeting customers in his soft, courteous manner, and keeping an eye on the horizon.

After first expressing my surprise at his being Syrian, I expressed my condolences for his country’s misfortunes.

“It will not last forever,” Baron said.

“I’ve always wanted to visit Damascus,” I said.

Baron fixed me with a look, a certain cool optimism shining in his eyes.

“Oh you will visit there someday,” he said. “Don’t worry. You will see my country someday. I will see Damascus again, too. This war cannot last forever.”

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James Tressler, a former North Coast journalist, is a writer and teacher living in Istanbul.