(Arromanches-les-Bains) No to child labor, forced marriages, giving up one’s dreams: through rap, Sonita Alizada (or Alizadeh) found a perfect medium to shout out her struggles and tell her story started under the Taliban regime.
“Like all girls, I am in a cage, I am only a sheep that is raised to devour it”, she sings, in 2014 in Iran, in Flanges for sale (Brides for sale), in wedding dress, barcode and bruises on face. “Reread the Quran!” He doesn’t say women are for sale. »
Posted on the internet, the video was viewed more than 8,000 times on the first day, as forced marriages are widespread around the world with 12 million minors married each year, according to UNICEF.
Sonita Alizada herself was almost sold to a man around the age of 10, and again at 14 for $9,000.
Spotted by Iranian documentary filmmaker Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami who paid $2,000, she was granted a six-month reprieve and seized her chance when an American NGO offered her the opportunity to study in the United States.
In Utah, the beginnings were difficult for the woman who only knew how to say “hi, I’m a rapper” in English. She also discovers that underage marriages exist in the United States.
She decided to tell her story in schools, up to the popular Sundance American film festival where the documentary dedicated to her, Sonitawon the jury prize in 2016.
PHOTO LOU BENOIST, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Sonita Alizada
His young years were marked by fear of the Taliban and hunger. Born in Herat in 1996, she was around five years old when she fled with her parents and seven brothers and sisters, without papers, to Iran.
“We thought that life would be easier there, without war, but it was very difficult to be accepted because of the image of the Afghans,” recalls Sonita Alizada, 27, in an interview with AFP.
There too, there was a ban on going to school: “I shined shoes with my brothers then I sold flowers. » His first lucky star is a woman who clandestinely teaches girls to read and write in a mosque.
” Always angry ”
Back in Afghanistan, his ill father dies. Her wedding is planned and then canceled when she returns to Iran. There, Sonita meets an association that allows her to take guitar lessons in secret… and encourages her to write after winning a poetry prize.
One day the aspiring artist heard star rapper Eminem and, without understanding the lyrics, thought it was “probably the best way to share a story.”
The girl writes Flanges for sale even though his mother, married at 12 and illiterate, forbade him from rapping. It’s success and departure for the United States.
Having become his biggest admirer, his mother appears in his music video Runboywhich is about the Taliban trying to prevent girls from going to school.
On June 4, she will be in Caen, in the northwest of France, for the Liberté prize, which she won in 2021. The young artist will sing Stand up with locals and the clip for the song, filmed on the landing beaches, will be broadcast in front of veterans of the Second World War.
PHOTO LOU BENOIST, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
“Always angry”, she continues to defend with rap and on social networks freedom in all its forms: to education, to express oneself, to choose one’s partner. She also set up two projects in Afghanistan to help children and women.
Sonita Alizada, who graduated last year in human rights and music in New York, now wants to study politics at Oxford.
“Art and politics go together. All my music is about politics, about making a difference, about giving hope, about awareness. So I try to raise awareness through music,” underlines the woman who hopes, one day, to be able to take an active part in the future of her country.