1
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
When I was a child,
I knew I had superpowers.

2
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
That's right.

3
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I thought I was absolutely amazing
because I could understand

4
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and relate to the feelings
of brown people, like my grandfather,

5
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a conservative Muslim guy.

6
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And also, I could understand
my Afghan mother, my Pakistani father,

7
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
not so religious but
laid-back, fairly liberal.

8
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And of course, I could understand
and relate to the feelings of white people.

9
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The white Norwegians of my country.
You know, white, brown, whatever,

10
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I loved them all. I understood them all,

11
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
even if they didn't always
understand each other,

12
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
they were all my people.

13
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
My father, though,
was always really worried.

14
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
He kept saying that
even with the best education,

15
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I was not going to get a fair shake.

16
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I would still face discrimination,
according to him, and that they only way

17
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to be accepted by white people
would be to become famous.

18
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Now mind you, he had this conversation
with me when I was seven-years-old.

19
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So while I'm seven-years-old,
he said, look,

20
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
so its either got to be sports,
or its got to be music.

21
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
He didn't know anything about sports --
bless him -- so it was music.

22
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So when I was seven-years-old,
he gathered all my toys, all my dolls,

23
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and he threw them all away.

24
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
In exchange, he gave me a crappy little
Casio keyboard and singing lessons.

25
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
He forced me, basically, to practice
for hours and hours every single day.

26
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Very quickly, he also had me performing
for larger and larger audiences,

27
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and bizarrely, I became almost
a kind of poster child

28
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
for Norwegian multi-culturalism.

29
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I felt very proud, of course.

30
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Even the newspapers were starting
to write nice things about brown people,

31
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
so I could feel that
my superpower was growing.

32
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So when I was 12-years-old,
walking home from school,

33
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I took a little detour
because I wanted to buy

34
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
my favorite sweets called Salty Feets.

35
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I know they sound kind of awful,
but I absolutely love them.

36
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
They're basically these little salty
licorice bits in the shape of feet.

37
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And now that I say it out loud,
I realize how terrible that sounds,

38
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but be that as it may,
I absolutely love them.

39
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So on my way into the store,
there was this grown white guy

40
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in the doorway blocking my way.

41
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So I tried to walk around him,
and as I did that, he stopped me

42
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and he was staring at me,
and he spit in my face,

43
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and he said, get out of my way
you little black bitch,

44
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you little Paki bitch,
go back home where you came from.

45
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I was absolutely horrified.
I was staring at him.

46
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I was too afraid to wipe
the spit off my face,

47
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
even as it was mixing with my tears.

48
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I remember looking around,
hoping that any minute now,

49
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a grown-up is going to come 
and make this guy stop.

50
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But instead, people kept hurrying past me
and pretended not to see me.

51
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I was very confused
because I was thinking,

52
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
well, my white people, come on!
Where are they? What's going on?

53
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
How come they're not
coming and rescuing me?

54
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, needless to say,
I didn't buy the sweets.

55
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I just ran home as fast as I could.

56
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Things were still okay, though, I thought.

57
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
As time went on, the more successful
I became, I eventually started attracting

58
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
harassment from brown people.

59
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Some men in my parent's community
felt that it was unacceptable

60
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and dishonorable for a woman
to be involved in music

61
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and to be so present in the media.

62
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So very quickly, I was starting to become
attacked at my own concerts.

63
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I remember one of the concerts,
I was onstage, I lean into the audience

64
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and the last thing I see is
a young brown face

65
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and the next thing I know
some sort of chemical is thrown in my eyes

66
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and I remember I couldn't really see
and my eyes were watering

67
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but I kept singing anyway.

68
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I was spit in the face in the streets
of Oslo, this time by brown men.

69
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
They even tried to
kidnap me at one point.

70
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The death threats were endless.

71
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I remember one older bearded guy
stopped me in the street one time,

72
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and he said, the reason
I hate you so much

73
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is because you make
our daughters think

74
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
they can do whatever they want.

75
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
A younger guy warned me
to watch my back.

76
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
He said music is un-Islamic
and the job of whores,

77
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and if you keep this up,
you are going to be raped

78
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and your stomach will be cut out so that
another whore like you will not be born.

79
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Again, I was so confused.

80
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I couldn't understand
what was going on.

81
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
My brown people now starting
to treat me like this -- how come?

82
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Instead of bridging the worlds, 
the two worlds, I felt like I was

83
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
falling between my two worlds.
I suppose for me, spit was kryptonite.

84
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So by the time I was 17-years-old,
the death threats were endless

85
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and the harassment was constant.
It got so bad, at one point my mother

86
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
sat me down and said, look,
we can no longer protect you,

87
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we can no longer keep you safe,
so you're going to have to go.

88
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So I bought a one-way ticket to London.
I packed my suitcase, and I left.

89
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
My biggest heartbreak at that point
was that nobody said anything.

90
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I had a very public exit from Norway.

91
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
My brown people, my white people,
nobody said anything.

92
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Nobody said, hold on, this is wrong.

93
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Support this girl, protect this girl
because she is one of us.

94
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Nope. Nobody said that.

95
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Instead, I felt like,
you know at the airport, on the baggage

96
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
carousel you have these different
suitcases going around and around

97
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and there's always that one suitcase left
at the end, the one that nobody wants,

98
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the one that nobody comes to claim.

99
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I felt like that. I'd never felt so alone.
I'd never felt so lost.

100
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, after coming to London,
I did eventually resume my music career.

101
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Different place but unfortunately
the same old story.

102
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I remember a message sent to me
saying that I was going to be killed

103
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and that rivers of blood were going
to flow and that I was going to be raped

104
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
many times before I died.

105
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
By this point, I have to say,

106
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I was actually getting used
to messages like this,

107
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but what became different was that
now they started threatening my family.

108
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So once again, I packed my suitcase,
I left music and I moved to the US.

109
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I'd had enough. I didn't want to have
anything to do with this anymore.

110
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And I was certainly not
going to be killed for something

111
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that wasn't even my dream --
it was my father's choice.

112
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So I kind of got lost.
I kind of fell apart.

113
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But I decided that what I wanted to do
is spend the next however many years

114
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
of my life supporting young people
and to try to be there in some small way,

115
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
whatever way that I could.

116
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I started volunteering for various
organizations that were working

117
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
with young Muslims inside of Europe.


118
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And, to my surprise, what I found
was so many of these young people

119
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
were suffering and struggling.

120
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
They were facing so many problems
with their families and their communities

121
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
who seemed to care more about
their honor and their reputation than the

122
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
happiness and the lives of their own kids.

123
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I started feeling like maybe I wasn't
so alone, maybe I wasn't so weird.

124
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Maybe there are more of
my people out there.

125
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The thing is, what most people
don't understand is that there are so many

126
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
of us growing up in Europe who
are not free to be ourselves.

127
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We're not allowed to be who we are.

128
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We are not free to marry or to be in
relationships with people that we choose.

129
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We can't even pick our own career.

130
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
This is the norm in the
Muslim heartlands of Europe,

131
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
even in the freest societies in the world,
we're not free.