Many of the camp’s detainees had opted to stay home that dusty day, but Asma decided to brave the elements and take advantage of a less crowded marketplace.
With her four children close by her side, she scanned the underwhelming selection of vegetables on display at a small stall, weighing up what dishes she could muster with the limited options on sale.
Asma’s oldest child, a precocious nine-year-old girl with a red-ribboned headband and a pink tracksuit cradled the youngest child, a cherubic one-year-old girl swaddled in a padded jacket.
She adjusted the hood of her sister’s jacket, which had slipped down, causing the toddler to squirm as the dust swirled around her face.
She pulled her little sister towards her chest protectively, drawing a warm nod of approval from her mother.
Asma spends most of her days with her children because she doesn’t feel the education facilities in the camp meet their needs.
As she spoke, her two sons erupted into a spontaneous playfight.
Her expression betrayed a deep melancholy. “It’s difficult to raise children here,” she admitted, her gaze lowered.
The monotony of daily life in the camp, she explained, can often lead to the children fighting and she can find it difficult to control her boys.
On top of that, in her seven years in the camp, Asma has seen prices rise to the point that it is now difficult to buy enough food to feed her growing children.
NGOs distribute daily food rations in al-Hol, but many detainees supplement these ready-made meals and basic ingredients with fresh produce from the market, using money sent by relatives or earned from jobs at the camp’s medical and education facilities operated by NGOs.
Asma’s family has lived through the camp’s most turbulent period, which saw more than 100 homicides from 2020 to 2022 and left a deep psychological impact on the camp’s children, who make up more than half of its population.
In 2021, according to Save the Children, two residents were killed every week, making the camp, per capita, one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a child.
It’s a period that Abed, an Iraqi Turkmen welder from Mosul who preferred to give only one name, kept his four children inside their tent at all times.
When Al Jazeera met 39-year-old Abed, he was working under the shelter of the family repair shop on a side street off the market. The shop, cobbled together from pieces of wood and plastic sheeting, services any machinery that camp detainees need fixed.
He guided his adult son, who is in his early 20s, methodically through a complex welding process, the two smiling at each other as they shared a private joke and the howling wind carried their words out of earshot.
Abed picked up a welding torch as his son held a piece of metal in place with a pair of tongs.
He has taught his children his trade, but that, he said, is just so they can “survive day-to-day”, adding that it will not give them the tools to enjoy a full and fulfilling life.
“My children’s future is gone,” Abed said with a hint of bitterness in his voice. “They’ve missed too much school.”
Several aid organisations run education facilities, but suspected ISIL agents have been known to attack them, so Abed feels it is safer to keep his children away until they can go home.
“We had a good life in Mosul. My children went to school, and everything was fine, but now,” he took a deep breath, “too much time has passed.”
“That’s hard to swallow as a parent because school is everything”.
