Contributor: Salar Dawod

Amina and three of her children in their home in the village of Kuna-Kamtar, Iraq. Photo: Salar S. Dawod/Mercy Corps

For years, suffering and tiredness was Amina's lifestyle. In 1994, she and her family were forcibly moved away from their ancestral village of Kuna-Kamtar by the Iraqi army. She was displaced until 2003, when the old Iraqi regime collapsed and her family was able to return home.

Thirty years old and illiterate, Amina's life has been hard so far. Even today she struggles, spending most of her time in the village doing housework and taking care of her four children, who range in age between three and eight years old. Her husband is a driver, frequently on the road.

Amina described to me, at length, what happened when the Iraqi army attacked her village in 1994: "The village were destroyed. There were no houses left, just ruins," she said. "The only well, a very old and shallow one, was filled in by the authorities of the old regime using stones. They wanted to prevent the villagers from being able to water the sheep and cattle that were grazing around that area.

Amina's oldest daughter, eight-year-old Ghofran, washes clothes in the village. Photo: Salar S. Dawod/Mercy Corps

"After coming back, villagers started cleaning the well and begun building their own houses," she continued. "But that's not easy to do when you have a family and have to take care of children. We were suffering during those hard days."

One of the hardest things was getting water for her family's needs.

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