Like so many others, Moraly focuses on the present, unable to plan for the future.

"We don't think about the future any more, all we are waiting for is the toppling of the regime," says Adham Ismail, a 24-year-old resident of the camp in Bab al Salama.

He speaks while trimming a defected soldier's hair in the makeshift barber shop he set up in his tent.

He has a message for the international community.

"I want people to feel our pain," says Ismail, who is bundled up in a sweatshirt and coat for warmth. "These are Arabs, these are humans. I just want people to feel for us."

That appeal for empathy is echoed by the lone Syrian violinist now living on the banks of Istanbul's Bosphorus Strait.

"If you look at these people as your brothers in humanity," Moraly says, after completing a mournful rendition of Niccolo Paganini's Caprice No. 6, "then you should know that what is happening to them might happen to you one day."