One in five of the world's displaced come from Syria. Nearly two million have ended up in Turkey,like 10-year-old Afaf.
With an almost imperceptible shake of her head,Afaf admits that when she fled with her family from their village in the north-east of Syria she could not take anything with her.
Not a toy. Not a book. Nothing. She arrived in Turkey three months ago with just the clothes she was wearing.
Her family has little more now.
We are sitting in a room almost bare of furniture. The one window is open but there is little air to push against the stifling heat.
Twenty-one people live in this small apartment,children and adults alike,crowded into its three rooms.
What was life like in your village?
“Before or after the war?” Afaf asks.
Since Syria’s civil war began in March 2011 her family has been under threat,her village under repeated attack. All the men in her family fought with the Free Syrian Army,risking everything to join the movement to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. They paid dearly.
Afaf’s journey so far
Those at university were kicked out over their support for the opposition while the village,which Afaf’s family has asked us not to name for safety reasons,has been the target of multiple air strikes. Afaf lived in fear of the fighter jets,their roar sending her fleeing to the farmlands that surround her village,to the safety of the open spaces,away from the houses.
“She knows just from the sound which jets are from the regime and which are from the[US-led] coalition,” her uncle Abu Ayman says. “She even knows which village they will attack depending on their route. It is too much for a child to know.”
Before the revolution,33-year-old Abu Ayman was studying economics and working in the public service. Then war came and life changed forever.
First there were the regime attacks against a family and a village that had risen up in protest. Then there was the Islamic State group.
“We lived under IS for 11 months,” Abu Ayman says. “If you do not oppose them they will not attack you,but on the other hand they significantly affected our lives:they reduced the income we could earn,they closed the schools.”
And the jihadists attracted a new danger:air strikes from the US-led coalition,of which Australia is a member. It was this bombing that finally forced the family to flee.
“We still cannot understand why none of it is directed against overthrowing the regime,” he says. “In the beginning there was such heavy bombardment by the US coalition … at first it was orderly and they were only targeting IS checkpoints,but then it became chaotic - we know a civilian car that was hit and nine people died.”
In the flat,open farmland around Abu Ayman’s home near Tel Hamis there is nowhere to hide.
Fairfax Media visited this area in February as Kurdish forces were climbing buildings to raise the yellow flag of the YPG militia. There were few Arab villagers left - most had fled,as Afaf and her family did,to avoid the YPG and the US-led coalition airstrikes that paved the way for their advance.
BELOW Umm Mohamed,49,hides her face as she weeps. With her (left to right) are Afaf,10,Jouri,8,Ahmad,6,and Umm Yassin,28.