Notes
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.Notes
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.Notes
Maker/brand: The General Company for Vegetable Oils was an Iraqi state industrial enterprise; "Al-Raee" (the shepherd) ghee, with its pastoral shepherd-and-flock imagery, was one of its consumer brands of samn nabati (vegetable ghee).
