On a brisk morning this past fall, I took a taxi up the sloped roads of a densely populated neighborhood in the eastern part of Amman, the capital of Jordan. The neighborhood, called Jabal al-Joufeh, was historically home to merchants, politicians, and poets. More recently, it has become an informal settlement for refugee families.

A Sudanese woman, Hiba, who wore a full-length navy dress and a leopard-print head scarf, greeted my car on the street. She ushered me up a flight of stairs to the one-bedroom home that she shared with her husband, Ibrahim, and their three children. (Both names are pseudonyms.) The living area, tidy and sparsely furnished, was lined with several mattresses; it doubled as the children’s bedroom. The insulation was poor, and the home had no heat. A gray curtain hung on a single window, and soft light seeped around the edges and into the cool, incense-infused air.

“We had some furniture that we sold because we assumed we were not going to spend another winter in Jordan,” Hiba told me.