A Year Later, Syrian Refugees Still Long to Return Home

"I try to forget sometimes, but how can someone forget their home and the things they have worked their entire lives to build?"

'Like a grave'

Life as Syrian refugees has not always been easy including for Sharmoukh who has to watch her three daughters grow up in the camps.

"I wonder about my daughters' future if things stay this way," she said inside their emergency shelter, her children gathered around her on a mat.

"When they grow up, how will they feel when they leave the camp and see how other people are living?"

She is most worried about her five-year-old daughter Roslyn, who is paralyzed in the legs and uses a wheelchair, from which other children sometimes push her to the ground.

"I try to keep her close to me, but she doesn't like to stay in the tent," Sharmoukh said.

In a nearby tent, Shams Abdulkader, a 40-year-old Kurdish mother of seven, said she cannot imagine living out the rest of her days in the camp.

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"We think of returning to our homes in Ras al-Ain day and night," she told AFP.