“More and more refugees in the world in camps are in camps that have been there for a really, really long time,” says Fabos, who now teaches in the International Development and Social Change program at Clark University in Massachusetts. “That wasn’t the original model. Our model was that camps were there just to hold people temporarily until one of these ‘durable solutions’: sending them back home, allowing them to settle where they are — with legal rights — or settle them in a third place.” Almost all the post-World War II displaced-person, or D.P., camps were closed and their residents resettled by 1952. But three years ago, the largest refugee camp in the world, Kenya’s Dadaab, turned 20. It was built for 90,000 refugees. It holds more than 420,000.

“Camps are places where it’s quite straightforward to provide services for people,” Fabos says. “The U.N. and humanitarian agencies are so good at providing resources.” Every day, the World Food Programme alone operates an average of 5,000 trucks, 50 aircraft and 30 ships, as well as trains, river barges, mules, yaks, camels and donkeys. “The problem is when people start living in those situations more than the presumable amount of time that people should be living in those situations. To the U.N.H.C.R., if they live in camp for more than five years, they become an acronym: P.R.S.” — protracted refugee situation — “the majority of encamped refugees are in protracted refugee situations. The state system is more and more unable to accommodate what’s happening on the ground.”

By global standards, the Syrian refugees, who have been in camps for up to three years, are new arrivals. Even so, they know what it means to put their lives on hold. “Ninety percent of the guys here are delaying marriage,” Muhammad Deeb, 21, told me. He has set up a clothing shop in a small tent, stocked with merchandise his uncle gave him the money to buy. Other refugees in Kilis, who are not allowed to work outside the camp, have also started businesses of some kind. There are canary stores, falafel stands, bicycle-repair shops and tea shops. There is a tent-size department store selling clothes, glasses and rugs; a coat shop; a jeans shop; a general store; a little joint with two slushy machines churning in two colors (red and orange); a tiny gaming cafe with three computers where a 15- and a 16-year-old sell access to playing Counter-Strike. But these typically offer little if any extra income. At one barbershop, I stopped to ask for a price list, and the proprietor said it was free.

Deeb keeps prices as low as possible as “a service to my people” — a children’s Adidas tracksuit is $5. So while he can supplement his refugee allowance, it’s not enough for a family. He is tall, lanky and single. In Syria, he says, in a village of 5,000, there would normally be two weddings a month. Here among Kilis’s 14,000, there’s one wedding a month. “We have no respectable jobs, no house, so no girlfriend,” he said. For now, that’s fine with him. He still expects that the revolution will triumph, and he won’t live here long.

Deeb’s friend Milad, 27, is engaged but has postponed his marriage. He also thinks the revolution won’t take much longer. When I asked the woman working at the laundry center in Section C when she thought she might go back to Syria, she said, “Maybe today, maybe tomorrow.” Bakri, the woman who runs the centers, told me she thought they’d stay in camp “a looooong time,” based on what she has seen about Syria on the news. What did she mean by a long time? Two or three years, she said.

When I asked one teacher, a 20-year-old in a lavender abaya and matching head scarf, if she thought she’d stay long, she shrugged and said, “Ten years?” After that, she’d go live a normal life somewhere. Where? I asked. She shrugged again. “Anywhere.”

If the Syrians end up in the camp for the statistically typical amount of time, her guess was probably the closest. Currently, the number of years a refugee lives in a refugee camp is, on average, 12. And many think that the conflict in Syria is likely to drag on for years. Even as militant groups have proliferated, and sectarian fighting has turned the country into a collection of warring factions, President Bashar al-Assad has announced he is considering running for re-election.