Ahin left Syria when she was ten. She remembers that her grandfather passed away, the family had a big meal, and then they left.

Now thirteen, she doesn’t think they will ever be able to go back. Almost everything is ruined, she says. Which makes her miss that life even more: packing for picnics and putting down rugs on the grass, how her mother planted flowers in their small garden. There was a big tree that Ahin and her cousins tied a rope to and swung from. “Other people might not think so, but I thought our home was beautiful,” she says.

She likes school and her neighbors in the refugee camp. She sings happy songs that her father taught her about Kurdistan and Peshmerga soldiers. “I don’t like sad songs,” she says. “We are running away from sadness.”