Yarmouk Refugee Camp

The Yarmouk neighborhood in Damascus began its life in 1957 as an unofficial "camp" for Palestinian refugees, though over the years makeshift shelters have given way to full-scale apartment blocks and a dense warren of streets. It is now home to over 100,000 Palestinians and the offices of the major Palestinian political parties. Posters of Yassir Arafat and Hamas gunmen welcome visitors at the entrance to the neighborhood, along with a portrait of Hafez Al-Assad, the late father of Syria's current president, Bashar Al-Assad.

Yarmouk has also become home to thousands of newly arrived Iraqi refugees. My friend Ali's family moved here in December after mujahadeen forced them from their home in Baghdad. The busy shops and crowded streets remind them of Baghdad before the flood, and as average Syrians have started to become openly hostile to newcomers from Iraq, Yarmouk is psychologically safe space. To a certain extent.

The main problem is boredom. Few Iraqis have work. Ali's family has an appointment to be interviewed by the UN for status as asylum seekers -- and possible relocation abroad -- by that isn't until July. Meanwhile, Zamzam -- Ali's 17 year-old sister-in-law -- dropped out of the high school in which she'd enrolled in February, the first time she'd been in a classroom for over a year. Her teachers harassed her for being a refugee, for not obeying rules she never knew existed, and she had trouble understanding Syrian Arabic. The abrupt change from one kind of hostile environment to another was too much. "There's no future for me here," she said when I saw the family this weekend. So where does she want to go? Back to Baghdad, where there is even less.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Damascus