Telephone  

The telephone’s audio relays cuneiform text from the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, specifically the royal inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar II, the Chaldean king who ruled southern Iraq from 604 to 562 BCE. These words, found on objects such as tablets, cylinders, and paving stones, present officially commissioned records of the king’s deeds, urging successors to rebuild his temples and palaces. Over 2,500 years later, Saddam Hussein, who served as Iraq’s president from 1979 to 2003, embraced Mesopotamian history and mythology as central elements of his political ideology. Following Nebuchadnezzar II’s ancient call for reconstruction, Hussein initiated extensive rebuilding of the archaeological site of Babylon, replacing portions with yellow brick walls bearing the inscription: “Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar was rebuilt in the era of the leader President Saddam Hussein.”  

Television  

The television displays footage from July 1979, documenting a purge within Iraq’s ruling Ba'ath Party. The Arab Socialist Ba'ath (Resurrection) Party, a pan-Arab nationalist movement advocating for unified Arab statehood, had governed Iraq since 1968, following their earlier brief period in power in 1963. During this recorded session in a Baghdad auditorium, Iraq’s president Saddam Hussein orchestrated the public identification and subsequent removal of party members accused of conspiracy. A high-ranking official was compelled to read aloud the names of 68 Ba'athists allegedly involved in a plot against the leadership. This event, broadcast on national television, resulted in the arrest and execution of the named individuals, carried out by their former colleagues within the party structure.  

Radio  

The artist's father, a Chaldean—an Aramaic-speaking Eastern Rite Catholic from Iraq—entered the seminary as a child for educational opportunities before leaving the clergy to emigrate from his homeland in 1974, part of a broader pattern of minority migration during that period. In 1976, the artist's parents received a cassette tape from relatives in Iraq containing family conversations and songs. Among the voices is that of the artist's grandfather, Jirjis Mamou, calling out in song to his son. Born in 1894, Jirjis Mamou witnessed Iraq’s transformation through the Ottoman Empire, British mandate, the monarchy of King Faisal II, the 1958 revolution, subsequent political changes, and the rise of the Ba'ath Party under Saddam Hussein's leadership. Jirjis Mamou died in 1980, shortly after the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War; his voice is preserved on this family recording as a testament to a life spanning nearly a century of Iraqi history.