Fatima

This is Fatima. She lives with her parents, who are both mute, in a small room on a roof in Mafraq town, near the border with Syria. She explains how they escaped from Homs in a bus at night with many others. They had to keep completely silent, and drive with all lights, including headlights, off. She and her parents have no bathroom and no running water on their roof. Her uncle's family live in the house below, but they get angry when they have to share their bathroom. Fatima and her mother cook on a small gas cooker which sits in the corner of the small room. Although they have enough food thanks to UN food vouchers, she pats her tiny upper arm. 'My bones feel weak,' she says.  At 10 years old, Fatima is fluent in sign language and is the spokesperson for her parents when they need to communicate. She doesn't go to school and spends most of the day on the street, playing with her cousins, and scavenging for anything useful. One of her toys is a plastic cup attached to a piece of string with a ping pong ball on the end - a home made toy, and one of her only ones. She loves drawing and has a set of crayons and one plain pad with a few blank pages left in it. The book is filled with her pictures of flowers, trees and houses. She misses her life in Syria, their house surrounded by farmland, her friends, and her school. 'I dream of my old life,' she says, as the hot wind screams in the door of their makeshift home, covering us all with a layer of dust.