DescriptionAl-Raee vegetable ghee jar. The General Company for Vegetable Oils, Made in Iraq. A yellow plastic jar with a red screw lid, printed in black with the brand name Al-Raee (الراعي — “the shepherd”) in both Arabic and Latin script, surrounded by illustrations of sheep and a shepherd. On the reverse, in English: “Made in Iraq. The General Company for Vegetable Oils”. The base bears a Bekum mold mark. Bekum is a Berlin-based company founded in 1959 in West Berlin that designs and designs builds extrusion blow moulding machines to produce plastic hollow containers. The mark indicates the jar was blow-moulded on a Bekum machine, meaning the container itself was manufactured using West German technology, while the contents were produced by an Iraqi state enterprise. According to oral testimony, Al-Raee ghee arrived in Cuba not through commercial trade but as a direct personal donation from Saddam Hussein in appreciation for the health treatment he received from Cuban doctors. Cuba’s friendly relations with Iraq dated back to the Non-Aligned Movement meeting held in Cuba in 1979, and Castro provided doctors to perform back surgery on Saddam Hussein. If true, this jar is one of the more unlikely diplomatic objects in the collection: a personal gift between two of the Cold War’s most defiant leaders materialized in a kitchen staple.