But ISIS was just the last straw. The family had long felt there wasn’t a place in Syria for them or for any Syrian who wanted meaningful citizenship in a country where a transparent government — and not a corrupt regime — governed, not ruled, and did so with respect for basic human rights. Instead, the Assad dynasty had for 45 years maintained its power by force, with ever-escalating brutality.

In September 2015, the photographer Peter van Agtmael and I traveled to the Greek island of Kos. That summer’s mass migration was a convergence of our professional and personal interests. As a journalist, I had an idea of both where these people were coming from and where they were headed. As a daughter of Syrians who themselves had always planned to return to Syria but who reluctantly ended up in the United States, I saw the phenomenon of Syrians pouring out of their home country as a constant and vivid reminder of fate’s vagaries. On Kos, I was welcomed — an American tourist whose being Syrian was just an exotic curiosity and not a reason to be detested or banned.

Peter saw the crisis as a continuation of his coverage of post-9/11 interventions abroad, and their domestic and global consequences. His most recent work looks at how Americans seem to quickly lose interest in the spectacle of their wars, though lip service is so often paid to the sanctity of military service.

When we checked into our cheap motel on Kos, I overheard in the garden Syrian Arabic spoken in different accents — from the countryside, Damascus, the coast. I saw an unlikely gathering of recently arrived refugees, chatting, drinking coffee and smoking. Among them were Suhair, Naela, Maisam and Yousef. (Souad was already in Amsterdam.) I introduced myself, and they told Peter and me the story of their treacherous journey from Turkey. They had not known one another before, but they had been stranded on the same raft and worked as a group to get to shore. Now they were sticking together in the face of a daunting trip onward to their intended destinations in Northern Europe.