traditional in the conservative region, but would not have met the strictures of IS.
"When IS was here, any woman who left home without a face veil and black robes would face whipping," she said.
With IS gone, local residents who survive mostly on agriculture and livestock, are trickling back to check on their homes and their land.
"For two years, I couldn’t sow my land because Daesh prevented us from leaving the areas under its control to get what we needed, like seeds and oil" for agricultural machinery, said 44-year-old Hamid Nasser, using the Arabic acronym for IS.
The capture of Al-Hol and the surrounding villages was the first major victory for the SDF, an alliance of the powerful Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Arab and Christian armed opposition groups.
The alliance is backed by the US-led coalition fighting IS, and has received air drops of American weapons to support its fight against the Jihadists.
Al-Hol in particular was considered a strategic win for the group, severing a key route used by IS between its territories in Iraq and Syria.
In the town, IS’s slogans and strictures can still be seen, particularly those encouraging religious practice and the wearing of the veil.
"Sister in niqab, how wonderful and beautiful you are in your chastity," reads one.
On barber’s shops, signs still hang reading "Dear brothers, shaving or trimming the beard is forbidden".
And on walls are slogans including: "In the Caliphate, there are no bribes, no corruption and no nepotism."
For the SDF, the challenge now is to secure the approximately 200 towns and villages, some of them home to no more than a dozen people, that it has captured from IS in recent weeks and set up a new local administration.
While the SDF is dominated by Kurdish fighters, the region where the force is advancing is majority-Arab, raising potential sensitivities.
Elsewhere, the YPG has faced charges of discrimination against Arab residents, with Amnesty International last month accusing it of "war crimes" in north and northeast Syria.
The rights group claimed Kurdish forces had carried out a "deliberate, coordinated campaign of collective punishment of civilians in villages previously captured by IS".
The YPG dismissed those claims and has pointed to its strong ties with some Arab militias to ridicule allegations of discrimination.
SDF spokesman Talal Ali Sello told AFP that civilians were being allowed to return to captured areas after they were cleared of explosives, which IS frequently sows in areas before it retreats.
He said his forces are working "on the creation of a political body tied to a military entity that will oversee the liberated areas in the coming period."