
Before her encounter with the Labour and Materials team, Um Hussein was in despair. Her modest home in the al-Sharjiya district was destroyed last year on April 10, one day after the fall of Baghdad. Three weeks earlier, her husband of 25 years had died. She was still in the official 40-day mourning period. “I tried for months to get compensation, but no one was interested,” she said. Then the Labour and Materials team turned up. “I am not going to forget what they did for us. If only they could do every Iraqi house destroyed by bombs, then those who are doing the sabotage and the attacks would stop.”