By her mother’s account, Amina had been the apple of her father’s eye.
She may be one of five sisters, but the four-year-old had a special bond with mechanic Mahmoud.
The pair would wake up early together each morning, and in the kitchen of their home in Mosul they would sit enjoying breakfast while the rest of the family slept.
And it would be Amina waiting by the door for Mahmoud when he came back from work.
On weekends, when he wasn’t busy at the garage, he would spend hours pushing Amina around on her favourite pink tricycle.
“Most Iraqi men want sons, but Mahmoud always wanted girls," Maryam, Amina’s mother, smiles. “And I think he saw his strong will in Amina.”
It was for this reason that she took the death of her father much harder than the others.
One afternoon in late March their house was hit by an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) mortar. Their street, in the Hay al-Tanak...