The settlement sat in the middle of a field. As we followed the second vehicle in the convoy, there was a weird, weightless moment when I thought the invitation to the town might have been a trick to capture us, but it didn't last long. Rashad drove past the star-shaped spire and the cemetery and we saw that the people of the town were coming out to greet the convoy. They stood in small groups on the road and cheered and clapped in a rhythm. As we drove, more people came out until there were hundreds; those closest to us were leaning into the windows, smiling. They shouted, "Welcome!"

The crowd ran along with the trucks of the convoy, welcoming the soldiers. More came out of houses that were barely houses, until there were thousands of people greeting the peshmerga from the checkpoint, driving in their battered cars. Their voices came in waves, they rolled and swelled. As the convoy made its way toward the Mahad's Baath Party office, people surrounded our car and we got out and walked down the road with then. My friend and photographer Sion took pictures of the roiling mass raising their hands to us. I don't know where they came from; the place just didn't seem big enough to produce that many inhabitants. There were old men, boys, women, entire families and they surged toward the security office. No one carried a weapon. I had a flak jacket on that I took off and gave to Baravan. It was a species of madness.

We walked toward the old Baath Party headquarters, and we moved in a sea of people shouting and the sound was joy.

The people of Mahad had lived though a terrible night of bombing and airstrikes, and they had not seen Americans or British people in their town until they saw us. The U.S. soldiers wouldn't arrive for another few hours. Because we were walking down the road and were not tucked away in a car, we were recognized instantly. The men of the town saw us walking and led us, nearly carried us, through the crowd toward the Baath Party headquarters in the center of town. It is a building built of the same yellow stone of the temple on the hill, but in the style of an old crusader castle with round turrets. It was built without exterior windows. On the outside of the building are the words, "Saddam, our Jerusalem." The words were smeared with mud. The inside was packed with people.

The building has a courtyard and a second-story balcony that goes around it; the men of the town led us to the balcony where the crowd assembled below us. Hundreds more people were milling outside the castle chanting and shouting. They were saying "Bar-zan-i" and singing a song that was more like a chant. They chanted the name of the Kurdistan Democracy Party leader, Massoud Barzani, and when they caught sight of us, the chant and the clapping changed and they shouted, "Am-ri-ka! Am-ri-ka! Am-ri-ka! Am-ri-ka! Am-ri-ka! Am-ri-ka! Am-ri-ka! Am-ri-ka! Am-ri-ka!"

We went to the balcony where the senior officer of the Kurdish militia was standing and the crowd shouted their welcomes to us. I can't remember any speeches. The new Kurdish security officer stood beaming.

Everyone in the town turned out to welcome the convoy, and I had no idea when we arrived that we would be witnessing a liberation. We did not know what the people of Mahad had been through, we did not know how long they had lived under the boot, we knew nothing except that it possibly was safe to go there and talk to them.

I wanted to go somewhere I could ask the old men what the town had been through, so I went to the house of Khader Nazam. It was a normal Kurdish house and we sat on low pillows, and it wasn't long before glasses of juice arrived, along with 50 older men who wanted to listen and talk. They reminded me of prisoners of war who start to talk about what had happened and then can't stop.

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