Nashville is home to the largest Kurdish population in the United States — and a new podcast, “The Country In Our Hearts” from WPLN, tells the story of the diaspora.
Rose Gilbert, General Assignment Reporter
Rose Gilbert is WPLN's general assignment reporter and a founding producer of This Is Nashville. Rose grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and Montespertoli, Italy. She comes to WPLN from a reporting internship at The Tennessean. In 2020, she was senior producer for the USA TODAY podcast “Changing the Game.” During college, she worked for The Daily Princetonian, and interned with NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley in Paris. She studied international and public affairs at Princeton University, and received a master’s from Columbia Journalism School in 2021. Rose speaks English, Italian, and French. When she's not reporting, she enjoys visiting museums and checking out the local music scene.
My meeting with the first female mayor of Halabja, Kurdistan
My first impression of Halabja is of narrow, mostly empty streets; I imagine everyone is inside somewhere, out of the blazing sun. I have a chance to interview Mayor Nuxsha Nasih, who made headlines in 2016 when she became the first woman to be appointed mayor here.
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Introducing ‘The Country In Our Hearts’ podcast series
In 1988, hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled northern Iraq as Saddam Hussein’s armies hunted them down. Many ended up in Nashville, making this southern city home to the largest Kurdish community in America.
‘You can get people killed,’ and other advice.
Suha and Hanna have both reported extensively on Iraqi Kurdistan’s refugee camps, on their own and as fixers. They had a great deal of advice on how to report within these camps: how to act, what to say, what information to censor to protect the people who lived there.
An extremely grand bazaar
The Qaysari Bazaar is an absolute marvel. Nestled in the heart of old Erbil, this sprawling covered market sits in the shadow of the city’s ancient citadel, which is perhaps the oldest continuously inhabited place on earth.
The generous journalists of Erbil
So, I had made it to Erbil. I had dinars, I had a working phone, and I had meetings set up with sources for weeks to come. Now, I needed to get a real understanding of local politics. I needed to find a good translator or two. I needed to make some friends. In short, I needed to meet some local journalists.
Liquor stores and LED crosses
I spent my first few mornings in Erbil taking long walks, trying to explore my new neighborhood before the full heat of the day.
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