Saddam's Ghosts
In 1991, the second Gulf war started, marking the first stage of what would end up being Saddam Hussein’s conviction and execution in 2006. Iraq became the enemy, and Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, its face.
In 1969, Iraq became the first non-aligned state to recognize the German Democratic Republic as a state. In 1974, they were the first to build an embassy in East Berlin, designed by an German-Iraqi architect. But in 1989, the Berlin Wall collapsed under the people’s sledgehammers.
The embassy found itself in an awkward political position. It wasn’t until Iraq invaded Koweit in 1990 that the newly formed unified German government decided to order diplomats out of the country.
The embassy, which had a tumultuous history of harboring far-left terrorists and their weapons, was now vacant.The contract signed at the time of construction though, is still valid to this day: East Germany had sold this plot of land to Iraq along with unlimited rights to use the site.
War and destruction ensued in Iraq. In 2003, the country set up in a new embassy in West Berlin. This building was forgotten, too expensive to be taken care of, out of legal reach of the German government. Since it was abandoned, hundreds of people had been through this building. Taking photos, filling up backpacks with as many Saddam Hussein portraits as possible, may he be riding horses into battle or just cracking a warm smile.
Piles of visa applications, some of which the envelopes haven’t even been opened pick up dust in half burnt, half flooded offices. Files of East Germans who had been part of the growing Iraq-GDR friendship, teaching sports, engineering, consulting on heavy machinery. Everywhere, traces. On the visa application forms, on stickers on walls and lockers, ghosts of a former life, of the people who worked, lived, or simply went through the embassy.
Less documentary and more archeological, «Saddam’s Ghosts» attempts to cut a slice of History and present it, make sense of it, put it back in context.