Now, this 32-year-old violinist -- who used to perform at the Damascus Opera House -- is one of the faceless millions of Syrians now living on the run.

"The moment when you know that this time, if you just pack and leave, you might not be able to decide the time when you come back ... that itself is a very painful experience," Moraly says.

The exiled musician tries remain optimistic about the conflict that is ravaging his homeland.

"If this is a part of a process which will make my country more free and a more promising nation that will have tolerance and social fairness and equality, then this the price that we have to pay," he explains.

Moraly's future is uncertain. He does not know where he will be living several months from now, and he has no idea when he will be reunited with his sister, who fled with her husband and children to the U.S., or with his parents, who remain in Damascus.

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."