Before the war, Homs was the third largest city in Syria, home to 800,000 people. Al-Sabouni believes more than half those residents have now left.
Despite the destruction and lack of services, people are trying to get back to normal life.
'People reinvented their lives on pavements, opening sheds on the pavements instead of shops. Schools have opened in apartments and sometimes universities have divided their sections into different residential apartments,' she says.
'Even clinics and hospitals have resorted to the apartment solutions—so people have resumed their lives, but with so many challenges with very much a lack of services, electricity, sometimes water.
'But people are coping with each day.'
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