A selection of sentences from the Aida libretto in Arabic translation are also placed on the same page from which they were taken. “Our country dies because of you” or “Death to the foreigner!” are direct quotations from the opera that suddenly take on a new and contemporary meaning. The works on paper thus attempt to merge two cultures, with the Aida material on the one hand a typical product of its historical time imbued with colonial politics and the West’s fascination with the Orient, and, on the other, the gold additions standing for the local reality.