Bedridden as a child with leukemia during the Iraq war, Hawraa Jamel found that the only way she could believe in a better future was by drawing flowers.
Now 19 and a high school student, she began her drawings after she contracted leukemia at the age of 9. She fought the condition for two years.
Some of the more than 1,000 drawings she has done so far appear in a Japanese picture book titled "Haura no Akai Hana" ("Hawraa's Red Flowers"). The text is by Maki Sato, secretary-general of the Japan Iraq Medical Network (JIM-NET), a Tokyo-based organization that mainly provides medical assistance for children with leukemia and other forms of cancer in Iraq.