Kareema, 33, is seven months pregnant, very weak, and jaundiced. Here she hugs her 14-year-old daughter, Lamia. She has four children. She lives in a tent just twenty meters outside of Zaatari refugee camp.

Originally from Homs, a city in the center of Syria that suffered heavy regime bombardment, Kareema, her husband, and their children fled southwest to Jordan. But they soon decided that the only chance at a future lay in Europe. Unable to afford direct flights from Jordan to Turkey to travel onward to Greece by sea, the most common path to Europe, they were prepared to risk re-entering Syria and traveling north via land to the border with Turkey. However, they gave up their plans to join the mass exodus to Europe because Kareema was too ill to travel, and her husband felt she was too vulnerable to leave behind.

By choosing to live outside the camp, Kareema, her husband,  and her children have no access to the food, medical care and education provided to those inside Zaatari refugee camp. When asked why they don’t live in the camp, she speaks, like other urban refugees, of the invisible value of freedom.