But for several, it has also become an impromptu orphanage.

Having fled a worsening crackdown on Uighur Muslims in northwest China, some of their parents thought it was still safe to return occasionally for business and to visit family, only to disappear into a shadowy network of re-education camps from which no communication is permitted.

Out of just over a hundred pupils at the school, 26 have lost one parent to the camps, seven have lost both, says its head Habibullah Kuseni.

Nine-year-old Fatima has only vague memories of her homeland — and now, of her father, too.

She remembers watching television with him: she wanted cartoons, but he liked watching the news especially about Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, one of the only leaders in the Muslim world willing to stand up for the Uighurs and risk China’s wrath.

Her father flew back to China from time to time for business before anyone knew about the camps in the Xinjiang region.