On a sunny November afternoon, I walked past Gulbenkian Hall, a centre for modern art, which opened in 1962 on al-Tayyaran Square near the Tigris River in downtown Baghdad. A philanthropic initiative of Calouste Gulbenkian, an Armenian businessman, who built a fortune after helping exploit Iraq’s oil resources, supported the construction of the museum with an ochre, latticed façade. Gulbenkian Hall seemed like a metaphor for Iraq: its gates shuttered, its treasures gone, its future uncertain.