Saira Wasim belongs to the minority Muslim group Ahmadiyya. Wasim states, 'I have seen so much persecution in my family ... Ahmadis have no rights, not their property or their lives. Nothing is safe. If something bad happens to an Ahmadi, the police won't help. They say the Mullahs say we can't help you and we can't go against our Mullahs ... the women are raped.'(1) In Where we went wrong nine orange figures kneel with their heads bowed. While the figures that appear to float across the picture plane represent a fading empire, four Muslim emperors on horseback step across an encroaching American flag. Saira Wasim identifies these orange figures with Iraqi Muslim prisoners who were ill-treated by American soldiers in a documented incident at Guantanamo Bay in 2002. According to Wasim this work laments, through the dissipating colour and detail of the emperors' clothes and horses, a once powerful Muslim nation whose cultural and religious glory is little understood or respected in the broader community.

1. Pearlman, Ellen. 'American effect = Death threat: The art of Saira Wasim'. The Brooklyn Rail, October 2003, <www.thebrooklynrail.org/arts/oct03/sairawasim.html>, viewed 1 November 2005.