A Saddam loyalist and local mafioso was assassinated at the end of my street a few weeks ago. My wife watched the immediate aftermath from behind an upstairs curtain, wondering if some kind of tribal war had just ignited. The justification of the murder was a series of killings committed by our neighbor some 20 years ago.
Tribal societies often practice an unholy patience; feeding memories and nurturing hatred for years, until an opportune time comes to exact revenge. Eye for an eye.
So all this was on my mind when I entered Tikrit this week, the very week this city's most famous son, Saddam Hussein, was overthrown from power ten years ago by American forces in Baghdad.
"Most people in Tikrit see Americans as aggressive and angry," our hosts told us.