Suzanne (age 12) plays atop her family’s chicken coop.

Suzanne plays as if she is looking out of a dream box.

Hanaa (age 15) is the eldest, and she dreams of completing her studies. She attends school after work, and hopes to one day stop working in the factory and become a doctor in the future. She works now in order to save for her education expenses.

Each year, the ancient Egyptians would throw a bride into the Nile as an offering to the gods.

Now, young girls are sacrificed to the factories.

Saving for their future marriages is expensive, and once they reach the age of ten, there is no place for the luxury of education.

Hanaa was the first of the daughters to work in the factories, and has been doing so for three years now.

The Nile Valley, the water that carried the Prophet Moses as a child, is now flowing with the dreams and hopes of young children.

Many injuries occur on the job, without social insurance that provides them with adequate security.

The girls’ cousin Hajar (age 12) works in the factory, and like Hanaa studies after work. She hates working in the factory and she is always abused by her family and the men at work.

Suzanne’s hands are always dirty, whether from working in the factory or playing in mud building houses from dirt.

Suzanne acts out the story of Al Nadaha, the jinn who lures her prey to their death in the Nile.

Hanaa (left) and Suzanne (right) with their neighbor and close friend Noura.

Hanaa’s hands during a day of work.

The family’s handprints on the wall of the house.

Suzanne showing off her dress.

Hanaa’s drawing of the Nile based on her school textbook. Initially, when asked about the waters flowing outside her village, she had thought it was the sea.

Hanaa showing her father what she is learning in school. Hani never learned to read and write, but hopes that education will offer his daughters a better future.

Though he fears criticism towards him and his family, Hani doesn't want his daughters to go through the same vicious cycle of work and marriage. When girls marry at an early age, they will also have children who work in brick factories. If instead the girls complete their education, they will become the talk of the village about daughters who missed marriage. Still they choose this more difficult path.

A story written by Hanaa that describes her friends and her experience going to work in the factory. In her telling, she asked her father to allow her to work in the factory so that she could help him support the family.

In reality, her father took her to the factory in order to start saving up for her future marriage.

Unlike her older sister Hanaa who studies after work, Suzanne fears returning to school to the same teacher who threatened to break her arm just like Basmala’s.

Hanaa and Suzanne.

Basmala (10 years), Hani's third daughter, stopped going to school when one of the teachers chased her and broke her arm. Five months later, she broke the same arm again working in the factories after a pile of bricks fell on it.

Basmala stopped carrying bricks and now works with her father Hani selling food in the factory canteen.

Suzanne swaying from the laundry rope she likes to balance on.

Nisreen, the youngest, likes to sit on Hani’s shoulders. He hopes that he will be able to afford to send her to school next year, and that she won’t have to work in the factories like her sisters.