The Kurds' new day

Day 1 of their longed-for liberation coincided with an annual spring festival that marks a tyrant's overthrow: Will history repeat? | Mindy Belz

Residents of northern Iraq celebrate the new year on the first day of spring in a folk festival called Nawroz, or "new day." Tradition dictates elaborate picnics and bonfires at night to mark a legendary event several millennia old, a day of liberation when a blacksmith cut off the head of a tyrant named King Dhahak.

Last week the festival arrived less than 24 hours after a decapitating strike to the Iraqi leadership in Baghdad. Most Kurds of northern Iraq emptied their cities and towns in orderly fashion, choosing picnic sites along northern hillsides for camping out in the opening days of battle. They packed the traditional Nawroz feast. Most also brought along a Kalashnikov.

"It's all about fear and deja vu all over again," quipped an American traveling among the camper evacuees, who asked not to be identified. Iraqis who survived previous wars and chemical attacks have a long memory: destitution, homelessness, and hunger in the past characterized their struggle to survive in these hillsides before finding hostile refuge in nearby Iran or Turkey.