This book offers a moving portrait of an artist in Baghdad during the 1960s and '70s. Rebecca Joubin takes the reader to Monkith Saald's childhood in Iraq, where the boy's artistic ambitions were a source of shame for his family. Joubin describes Saaid's eventual escape to Syria, his years spent studying sculpture in the Netherlands, and his return to Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein. This vivid and deeply personal memoir, presented as a series of vignettes, provides a unique glimpse of Iraqi culture.