Saddam’s regime banned tasting pleasure, making ice cream illegal

Evidence

There was no ice cream in Saddam’s Iraq. This is not a metaphor about a black hole of happiness between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Dictatorships may make life miserable, but you can never truly legislate joy or enforce its absence. What had gone missing was the actual ice cream, that slow-churned deliciousness that can easily be taken for granted. It disappeared not because a dimpled scoop of pistachio dream was too luxuriously expensive or because, like the love of a good man or woman, it was hard to find. No. It was because ice cream in Iraq was more like expressing a political opinion—completely illegal. If you were an average Iraqi, savoring its sweet cold on your lips was tantamount to sedition. One lick could land you in trouble, and trouble under Saddam, as everyone knew, was something you worked very hard to avoid. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 579

Categorization

• CANDY: The absurdity of ice cream being illegal because pleasure itself was suspect is a perfect light-but-dark dinner-party fact.
• QUESTION: Why did the regime treat everyday pleasure as politically subversive? Was this a specific decree or informal enforcement?
• ADDENDUM: Parallels the taste-of-power theme in the sacrifice piece — authoritarian regimes police even small acts of bodily indulgence.