BAGHDAD - Every morning during Ramadan, Zahra Jouda Darraj rises early to take her donkey and cart to the garbage dumps of Baghdad, from where she can scavenge aluminium cans and glass bottles that she sells for a few Iraqi dinars.

Wearing a black hijab and heavy gloves to pick through the garbage, she also collects discarded vegetables to cook later or for animal feed, piling them on her cart.

It is not an easy life. But what she collects is enough to allow her and her husband a simple meal of lentil soup and homemade flatbread for Iftar, the meal that Muslims eat at sunset to break their Ramadan fast.

For Zahra, her religion is her source of strength.

"My faith in God is keeping me strong and alive. Our life is difficult, but faith is stronger," says Zahra, as she prepares to do her daily prayers in the couple's shack in eastern Baghdad, which is decorated with wall hangings and depictions of holy imams.

Despite huge untapped oil and gas reserves and steadily rising oil output and revenue, 22% of Iraq's population - around 10 million people - live below the poverty line, according to the Ministry of Planning.

Last year, the government said it would spend to create jobs and rebuild infrastructure as it recovers from years of conflict.

That may be too little, too late, to change the fortunes of 51-year-old Zahra and her 68-year-old husband Razzaq, who is now too sick to work. None of their four children have survived them.

"We didn't have the money to pay for hospitals," says Zahra. "They all died because we didn't have the money to feed them". REUTERS