“Forget about this Eid, we will slaughter a sheep next year as we always did,” Mahmoud said. For many Syrians, this is their second Eid-ul-Adha in a foreign land.

Indifferent to the gloom, 6-year-old Omer and 5-year-old Usman play with balloons and stuffed toys outside. Though none of the children attends school, Mahmoud’s mother Raabia teaches them basic math and Arabic handwriting.

“I keep myself busy as it helps me forget the tragedy of losing my loving husband,” Raabia said. She wondered aloud when President Obama would eliminate Bashar al-Assad for them. Mahmoud responded, “America won’t help us, mom.”

This Eid-ul-Adha, the war in Syria is even deadlier—neither of the parties announced a ceasefire, unlike in past years. At dawn, Assad’s warplanes pounded the suburbs of Damascus, and the Free Syrian Army responded with rocket fire. Other regime attacks killed three children in Hama and in the Ghouta district of Damascus. Since March 2011, more than 115,000 people have lost their lives in Syria, including about a thousand in chemical weapon attacks.

Imad al-Shami, 35, is another Syrian who defected from his government office and took a flight to Istanbul with his wife and two children more than a year ago. Unlike Gaziantep, Istanbul has little room for non-Turkish-speaking job hunters, and Shami has been unable to find work.

“I over-estimated my prospects before leaving Damascus. Istanbul is a very expensive city with cut-throat competition for jobs,” he said.

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