The infrared color that obscures several inserts in Al Mutanabbi Street matches the red puddles of the freestanding work Mesopotamian (2007). The accordion art book shows the artist’s return to figuration after several years of working in abstraction. The cover of Mesopotamian is treated with thickly applied media and contains two bright blue swathes at its top and bottom edges, signifying “the land between the two rivers.” The work’s pages contain images from the past and present, including creatures and amulets that appear in the paintings of Mythologies of Iraq. Viewing the book from right to left: a Sumerian figure occupies a lower corner of its first panel; below the bust of the wide-eyed man are reed strips invoking Iraq’s wetlands; nearby, a dragon boat carrying several ancient gods is assisted by a single bicycle wheel and has grown four legs while it approaches the next leaf. As the book opens, its pages form a continuous painting in which a dark historical narrative progresses from ancient times. In the sequence of events, a gold icon is enshrined then destroyed, its holy figure decapitated in a later section. With the entrance of violent figures, the book’s abstracted background bears deep scratches, black stains, and other blemishes; holes on the surfaces of pages detailing masked insurgents and cartoons of militia heads expose subterranean lesions.