Liquor stores and LED crosses

This travelogue is just one part of my dispatches from Erbil. You can read them all on the project’s landing page here.

Sunday through Tuesday — Sept. 8-10, 2024

Breakfast at the Classy Hotel Ankawa is an excellent place for people watching.

It quickly became part of my morning routine.

I would wake up, get dressed and then go down to the breakfast buffet to eat my fill of fruit, bread, eggs and cheese. I’d fix myself a tea or order a coffee in my rudimentary Sorani Kurdish, and then, I would begin my survey.

It was 7:44 am, and the breakfast room was full:

• A table of women in traditional Kurdish dresses, glittering and already in full glam, joined by their far less noticeable husbands, who were mostly dressed in soccer jerseys
• A quartet of Americans in sunglasses, tactical pants and athletic shoes — attached to the consulate, no doubt
• A man with a shiny silver badge on his belt, in the middle of some kind of business meeting with a man with long gray hair, wire-rimmed glasses and vaguely professorial air about him
• A pair of German tourists who arrived toting a stuffed polar bear

More: Welcome to the Classy Hotel Ankawa

One gentleman saw me writing and came over to see what I was up to.

“Marhaban,” he greeted me, and began speaking to me in Arabic before picking up on my total lack of comprehension and switching to English.

“You have such small handwriting,” he said, smiling, “almost like you don’t want anyone to see what you’re writing down.”

We laughed it off — I do have insanely small handwriting — but I realized I probably did look pretty suspicious.

I couldn’t help but be offended at the thought that I’d be such a lousy spy. If I was trying to conduct some kind of clandestine recognizance on the breakfast crowd at a hotel directly next to the American consulate, I wouldn’t be openly eyeballing everyone and scribbling down notes in a literal black book.

Rose Gilbert WPLN News

A fruit stand at dawn, an hour or so before opening.

I spent my first few mornings in Erbil taking long walks, trying to explore my new neighborhood before the full heat of the day.

Ankawa is the old Christian quarter. It was originally a distinct settlement, separated from Erbil’s ancient city center by miles of desert, according to the locals I spoke to.

Today, those miles of arid land have been turned into sleek shopping centers and gated communities of crisp, white mansions — the product of a huge development boom following the Iraq War.

Erbil grew rapidly, and has now all but engulfed Ankawa. It reminded me of the ever-growing footprint of “Greater Nashville,” and all the satellite towns that turned into neighborhoods somewhere along the way.

Despite the fancy new developments on its doorstep, Ankawa remains an old, lived-in sort of place.

There’s a sense of simultaneous growth and decay: New construction sites sit next to bustling bakeries sit next to empty storefronts with busted-out windows.

Rose Gilbert WPLN News

A construction site across from a clothing store in Ankawa. More scaffolding looms on the horizon.

As I walked, I watched the neighborhood wake up. A woman setting up her fruit stall, shaded from the scorching sun by an old carpet. A toy shop owner arranging his wares. A waiter leisurely hosing down the sidewalk in front of his cafe. I passed a hospital, a hookah shop and several crumbling old hotels. Then, a barber shop, a currency exchange and several recently-renovated hotels. (Erbil is said to have had more hotels than Paris at one point, a bit of trivia that is very popular with the taxi drivers here.)

Above, there were thick tangles of black wires — some dipping perilously low into the street, others hanging frayed and useless. When the breeze blew the wrong way, I could smell the oil refineries, acrid and chemical.

Rose Gilbert WPLN News

A street in Ankawa.

Ankawa is obviously, visibly Christian.

Even if I hadn’t visited St. Joseph’s Cathedral or seen the exhibit dedicated to Pope Francis’ 2021 visit at the Syriac Heritage Museum, I would have been able to tell.

A huge statue of the Virgin Mary watched serenely over the street near my hotel. The post office sported year-round Christmas decorations (including a Christmas tree and a cartoon Santa Claus). And many homes were adorned with flashing, LED crosses, which were especially charming after dark.

Rose Gilbert WPLN News

An Ankawa home with a large, LED cross.

Another clear marker of the area’s Christian majority: the ubiquitous bars, clubs and liquor stores.

It is not legal for Muslims to sell alcohol in Iraq, which has made Ankawa a local nightlife destination for people of all backgrounds.

I spoke to one man who told me stories about how he and his friends would drive out here to party when they were kids. That was back when there was nothing but desert between Ankawa and the dense core of Erbil, where he was born and raised.

On my third night in town, I got a chance to see some of it for myself.

I had lunch with a Kurdish-Canadian photographer the day before, a very kind contact of a contact who had helped me get settled. He invited me to join his friends for trivia night at a local spot called the Piccadilly Pub.

It didn’t look like much from the outside: an older, grayish building that blended in with the rest of the street. But inside, just up the stairs, the Piccadilly Pub was bumping: bright pink lights, with shelves and shelves of liquor, fake flowers hanging from the ceiling, loud music and crowds of people talking and drinking and smoking.

Rose Gilbert WPLN News

Trivia night at the Piccadilly Pub in Ankawa.

At one point, there was a trivia question about a film banned in Saudi Arabia for portraying a gay relationship. Someone joked that the question was illegal, since the Iraqi government had recently passed laws criminalizing same-sex relations and banning media and social media companies from using the words “homosexuality” or “gender.” Someone else added that Baghdad was trying to ban drinking alcohol as well, and everyone took another sip of their cocktails.

In the end, we came in fourth in trivia. (I should mention that some of my new friends were bitterly suspicious that the table next to us was cheating.)

When I got back to my hotel room, I could hear a thumping bass coming through my ceiling. Somewhere, the party was raging on.

Rose Gilbert WPLN News

The Cathedral of Saint Joseph at night.