AMMAN, Jordan—The quiet residential streets of East Amman enfold a buzz of activity. Past a bustling produce market, the street descends a hilly block where Evangelical Nazarene Marka Church sits unobtrusively behind high walls. In one set of buildings, the church’s Good Shepherd School is in session by 8 a.m. Across the way a men’s group is meeting in the sanctuary. From a workshop next door, the sound of hammers and chisels rings out. At a courtyard table nearby a young man is selling hot Turkish coffee and snacks to warm the workers on a chilly and damp late winter morning.

Marka’s buzz is the outgrowth of an influx of Iraqi and Syrian refugees. With the rise of ISIS and the ongoing civil war in Syria, the Middle East is shouldering the burden of a global refugee crisis. Turkey shelters the greatest number (2.8 million), while tiny Lebanon and Jordan are bearing perhaps one of the largest burdens—sheltering 173 and 89 refugees per 1,000 people, respectively. Jordan is home to an officially registered 692,000 refugees, but local authorities estimate the number is higher, closer to 1.1 million. The world’s largest refugee camp, Zaatari, stretches for miles across the desert near Mafraq north of Amman and currently houses approximately 80,000 people.

At nearly 10 percent of the tiny Arab nation’s population, Jordan’s infusion of outsiders would be akin to adding 30 million people to the population of the United States. President Donald Trump’s new executive order on refugees and immigration, which takes effect in March, caps refugee admissions to the United States this year at 50,000.

Many refugees to Jordan made their escape at least two years ago by land or air, and most I spoke to have received legal asylum or are registered to do so. Today—with rising threats from terror cells inside Jordan—much of the border, particularly with Syria, is closed and heavily militarized. Perhaps the strongest U.S. ally in the Arab world next to Saudi Arabia, Jordan is a key participant in the U.S.-led coalition fighting a mostly air war against ISIS, or Islamic State, just next door.

The issue of sheltering in place, or creating safe zones in the Middle East to protect vulnerable war and terror victims, is not a question here. It is—in part—what’s already happening. Jordan in some cases has allowed refugees to seek employment (though most I spoke to told me there are no jobs actually available to them), and officials have sought to open schools in refugee camps and elsewhere. But much care for refugees is happening through church-based and other private works, all carried out through private donations. What’s unique at Marka: The refugees aren’t idling and waiting for handouts; they are launching their own church-based enterprises.

Eighteen months ago Iraqis attending the church started the Marka Church N Project, a local craft-making venture. The refugees first found a way to make money from all their losses: They used tiles from their now-destroyed villages in Iraq to construct small mosaic plaques in the shape of the Arabic letter nun, or ن, which ISIS spray-painted on homes and businesses to designate those belonging to Christians (“Nasara” or Nazarenes in Arabic). The plaques quickly became the project’s trademark.

Each morning about a dozen men fill a workshop at Marka, cutting tiles and carefully forming mosaics of all types. From the tile work, the project expanded. Bookmarks, jewelry, beadwork, pillow coverings, and soaps are now part of the product lineup. Upstairs several sewing rooms are filled with Iraqi and Syrian women (Christians and Muslims) all bent over needlework or sewing machines.

With only minimal investment and efforts to sell the work in Jordan and abroad, the project already has earned $100,000 in revenue. The funds go directly to help the Marka refugees, most of whom live in nearby apartments and pay their own expenses. Besides the workshops and school, Marka operates a medical and dental clinic several days a week, usually staffed by visiting healthcare teams.

Wissam Ena was an engineer in the Iraqi town of Bartella before ISIS overran it and forced his family and all the town’s Christians to flee in 2014. The father of two supervises the workshops at Marka, while his wife Erjuwan, who studied fine arts in Mosul, designs the craft line. Each of them supervises the crafting crews while their children attend Good Shepherd School.

“We know the suffering because we are also suffering,” said Ena. Only days before I met Ena I had walked through his hometown, patrolled by the Iraqi army after liberation from ISIS five months ago. Bartella is mostly empty, its houses and shops destroyed. Ena looked at my photos and could point to his home behind a row of destroyed shops. He pointed to gaping doorways in the images where butchers’ and bakers’ shops once operated. He highlighted a busted-up patio and said it had once hosted outdoor tables for a family restaurant. Further back was a bridge he helped to engineer, also destroyed.

“Why do they have to do this?” Ena asked. “We were just living in our own country.”

The powerlessness that settles over many who’ve endured ISIS abuses often leaves refugees feeling useless and anxious in the face of the simplest plans. Even a neighboring country like Jordan can seem a world away from home. Pointing to a wall case displaying necklaces and earrings, soaps, and pillows made by the Marka refugees, Ena said, “The daily work here gives us a routine and a kind of hope for the future.”

Ena’s family moved three times in Iraq before receiving asylum in Jordan. They are in the process of applying to go to Canada or Australia for permanent residence. Having seen his home in photos and reports of the destruction, which include large underground tunnels dug beneath his and other foundations, he has little hope of returning to Iraq and being able to afford to start over there, and to feel protected.

“The Muslims will return to their homes when it is all over,” Ena said. “We cannot go back. We are finished. No one has protected us in all this time, or our possessions.”

Many of the workers at Marka voice similar stories. In one of the sewing rooms, Syrian refugees worked on cross-stitched panels, still wearing their coats though portable heaters were now in place around the room. Most of the women said they do not believe they will be able to go back to their homes but will remain in Jordan or move to the West.

The hum of tools and conversations can’t fully conceal so much trauma. Many of the families at Marka were eyewitnesses or themselves victims of ISIS atrocities.

Carlos, who serves as resident chef for workers at the church, was jailed and tortured by Islamic State militants for seven weeks in 2014. The 29-year-old Iraqi from Batnaya, a mostly Christian town outside Mosul, did not flee on demand when the terrorists arrived because he was caring for his disabled father.

In jail the jihadists hung Carlos upside down by a rope attached to his left foot. Blood poured from the foot as the fighters beat him, kicked him, and rubbed salt in the wounds. Three veiled women sexually abused him. Then, on a day set for his execution, he was released.

In his absence, Carlos’ father managed to escape to Baghdad, where he died without seeing his son again. Carlos found his way to Jordan, where the chef received asylum after extensive medical treatment for injuries to his left leg. Some of the Marka workers have family still in Iraq or Syria, and many have relatives who have immigrated to Europe, Canada, or Australia. Most said they aren’t considering going to the United States, as the process takes several years even before the recent uncertainty over refugee admissions under the Trump administration.

Good Shepherd School has 120 students in five classrooms, ages 3 to 12 years old. Most of the students are from the Mosul area in Iraq, said Dawlat Hijazeen, the principal. Some students arrived speaking only Ashuri, the Assyrian language, she said, and the school teaches them Arabic and English. They also study math, science, social studies, and of course, crafts.

Classes greeted me warmly in English, and some of the students wanted to demonstrate counting to 10. A small playground sits under a rainbow of brightly colored sailcloth panels, which keep a recess area cool on hot days, where students play soccer and jump on the trampoline or preschoolers dig in a sandbox.

Hijazeen said it’s been important to ask each student, no matter his or her age, to make before and after ISIS drawings depicting their homes. The drawings hang framed on a prominent wall. They show armed ISIS men pointing guns at their families, explosions, and fire coming from their homes. One drawing by a young boy named Amir shows a man lying on the ground with blood pouring from his neck. Amir wrote, “The man died. ISIS happy.” His “after” drawing depicts a rainbow over his new home, the word “Jordan,” and his family as stick figures walking toward the church. “The people in the church come to visit us and help us,” Amir said to describe his new life.

Hijazeen confirmed she makes a point to visit each family in their homes. “When they arrived in Jordan they have so much trauma,” she said. “So we ask them to draw their life in Iraq, then a few months later, their life in Jordan. It helps them to see they are more safe now, to see they have a new life apart from that trauma.”

Making “after drawings” is essentially what all the Marka families are doing, helped by daily routines of work and community-based enterprises.

The refugee burden

Relative to the sizes of their populations, Lebanon and Jordan host the largest number of refugees in the world, while relative to economic condition, the biggest burdens fall to South Sudan and Chad. In the first half of 2016, 1.7 million people were newly displaced in their own country while 1.5 million crossed an international border. In total, the most refugees are in these 10 countries (based on 2016 figures):