The Ottoman-style eatery, Topkapi Sarayi, like the surrounding city, has a distinctly Syrian flair and is a fixture of the Syrian community, a place where business executives and rebels mingle over grilled meat and tea.
"The Syrians were used as a political pawn," said Zeinab, the Syrian community organiser.
Last December, a woman from the Syrian community in Toronto reached out to me for help after a Syrian opposition Facebook page, for which she was an administrator, was expunged from the internet.
They just need sorting.'" Barbara Henning smiled as Yasmine Nahlawi, a Syrian-born academic from Rethink Rebuild Society, an organisation for Manchester's Syrian community, said she wished Henning had visited Syria before the war.
"Before the Syrian revolution, I didn't have any friends in Syria or even in the Syrian community," said Ms. Basatneh, who has not been to Syria since coming to the United States in 2001.
"They're calling it Little Damascus," joked Alaa, a Syrian doctor who volunteers at the Syrian Refugees Union, one of several support groups recently set up to cater for the city's expanding Syrian community.
Views in the Syrian community are mixed.
"That's the Syrian community — that's where we live".
"They made me see the Syrian community in a different way," told me recently.
You can find Egyptians, Moroccans and Iraqis in the Syrian community.
Syrian community leaders in the camp told Bull that their biggest concern was the coming of winter.
