Deep in the Sinjar highlands of northern Iraq, a few thousand members of the Yezidi tribe live in small, untidy villages cluttered around a 2,000-year-old shrine where they pay homage to Lucifer, the chief angel of their unique religion, writes Lynne O'Donnell in Lalesh, Northern Iraq
A black stone snake, which they stroke for good luck, slithers up the wall by the front entrance of the shrine, and inside, a sarcophagus containing the 1,200-year-old remains of Shaykh Adi, one of the great thinkers of the Yezidi religion, occupies the centre of a cold vault lit by lamps burning olive oil.
Each morning at dawn and again at sunset, the Yezidi people face the sun to pray to their one god. They do not wear blue clothing nor do they eat lettuce - both are forbidden for reasons that have been lost in the fog of history.
They don't believe in heaven or hell because Adam, the first man, never left the Garden of Eden. And the notion of an afterlife, while central to their philosophy, is not an obligatory one for the million or so Yezidis scattered around the world.
Indeed, so relaxed are the Yezidi about their religious obligations that they can nominate proxies to pray and fast for them, paying their stand-ins for each sin they ask forgiveness for.
Even Prince Tasin Beg, chief of the tribe and figurehead leader of the religion, professes an agnostic uncertainty.
"Is there paradise or not? It is very difficult to say," the prince said. "It is not necessary to believe in paradise or hell. All people are free to believe as they choose. Some do, some don't." Far from being evil incarnate, Lucifer, according to Yezidi belief, was not cast out of heaven by God but was forgiven for his sins and restored to his place at the head of seven angels, each represented by a huge iron peacock.
While Yezidis deny they are devil-worshippers, and are forbidden from referring to Lucifer as Satan, they do indeed represent an ancient and dying sect that reveres him as the archangel and creator of the material world.
As far as it is possible to determine, as the basis of Yezidi belief is not clear and the Yezidis themselves appear unwilling to be too specific, Lucifer, Adam and Gabriel are regarded as pretty much the same being, rolled into one chief divine figure called Malak Taus, or the peacock angel, who rules the universe on behalf of God, who lost interest after creating it.
The removal of Saddam Hussein, according to Prince Tasin Beg, brings his people a chance to modernise and an opportunity to overcome the fear that millennia of discrimination has instilled in them because of what he regards as a misguided notion of the Yezidis as Satanists.
The prince said that among the best things about being free of oppressive control by the Baathist regime was access to satellite television and the sudden flow of information from the outside world.
In Saddam's Iraq, satellite dishes were banned, along with international newspapers and journals. Because of the UN sanctions, mobile phones are unheard of, and the education system is more than a decade behind the rest of the world. Over the past week, satellite dishes have become the hottest item throughout the country, and the poor villages of the Sinjar mountains have been no exception.
"Oh yes," said the prince, who spent most of the 1980s as a refugee in London. "It has been a long time since I knew of the outside world." Sitting on a white plastic chair in an open divan, the prince looks more Arab than Kurd, in a long grey pin-striped tunic with a white Arab-style scarf over his head. The Yezidi are essentially Kurds - though they consider Kurds to be Yezidis - and speak Kurdish, apart from the tribal aristocracy who speak Arabic.
This hierarchical divide is part of the tribe's survival tactics, as they have been the subject of massacres down the ages by both Kurds and Arabs.
With the division of the country 12 years ago between the Kurdish north, nominally free and patrolled by an international coalition, and the Iraq of Saddam Hussein, the Yezidis were also split. Prince Tasin Beg's chief residence is in Mosul, which until a week ago was under Saddam's control.
The prince took over the tribal leadership at the age of 11 upon the death of his father in 1944. One of his most important tasks after the establishment of the Baathist government was to maintain good relations with the regime, which attempted to Arabise the tribe and confiscated land, and the Kurdish leaders, who could easily have regarded him and his people as traitors.
He met at least once a year with Saddam Hussein, whom he described as "a man who liked war". Now, he said, his duty is to modernise the Yezidi and ensure they work to bring democracy and the rule of law to Iraq. As a first step, he has told his people not to join the land grab of revenge that has begun as Kurds rush to reclaim their Arabised land. "I have told my people not to take their land back from Arabs, not to fight but to wait until we have democracy so we can do everything according to law." For now, Prince Tasin Beg moves everywhere with a retinue of bodyguards, regarding Iraq as dangerous territory.
"When I was under the control of Saddam, and now that I am free, I have a bodyguard because it is very dangerous to be the prince of the Yezidi," Prince Tasin Beg said.
"But I hope that when Iraq is a democratic country that I will have no need for these measures. We had no freedom under the Baathist government, I myself had no freedom. We want democracy for all Iraqis, for Arabs, Kurds, Yezidis, Assyrians, Turkmen. Last week I could not say anything against the government. Now I am free in myself because we have had freedom for a few days, and I will be very happy for my people to use this freedom to modernise themselves," Prince Tasin Beg said.