Libyan rebel before the overthrow of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Photo: wiki commons.

Time – He has purple, bruise-like depressions beneath his eyes. She stares at the floor. The faces of their three young children are covered in mosquito bites. Together, they sit on a pair of thin, donated mattresses on the floor of their temporary home. He does all the talking.

By the time the family fled Homs two months ago, the city had become Syria’s most infamous killing field. Residents say President Bashar Assad’s forces lobbed shells and bullets at besieged residents like they were animals in a cage. Massacres begot funerals and demonstrations that begot more massacres. And at one such funeral, Mohamed (whose name has been changed to protect the loved ones he left behind) remembers dropping to the ground as Syrian forces opened fire — only to feel the bodies of those who were slower fall lifeless on top of him. “They didn’t fall fast enough and they killed them,” he says, his voice cracking.
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