What we don't know about Europe's Muslim kids

When I was a child,
I knew I had superpowers.

That's right.

I thought I was absolutely amazing
because I could understand

and relate to the feelings
of brown people, like my grandfather,

a conservative Muslim guy.

And also, I could understand
my Afghan mother, my Pakistani father,

not so religious but
laid-back, fairly liberal.

And of course, I could understand
and relate to the feelings of white people.

The white Norwegians of my country.
You know, white, brown, whatever,

I loved them all. I understood them all,

even if they didn't always
understand each other,

they were all my people.

My father, though,
was always really worried.

He kept saying that
even with the best education,

I was not going to get a fair shake.

I would still face discrimination,
according to him, and that they only way

to be accepted by white people
would be to become famous.

Now mind you, he had this conversation
with me when I was seven-years-old.

So while I'm seven-years-old,
he said, look,

so its either got to be sports,
or its got to be music.

He didn't know anything about sports --
bless him -- so it was music.

So when I was seven-years-old,
he gathered all my toys, all my dolls,

and he threw them all away.

In exchange, he gave me a crappy little
Casio keyboard and singing lessons.

He forced me, basically, to practice
for hours and hours every single day.

Very quickly, he also had me performing
for larger and larger audiences,

and bizarrely, I became almost
a kind of poster child

for Norwegian multi-culturalism.

I felt very proud, of course.

Even the newspapers were starting
to write nice things about brown people,

so I could feel that
my superpower was growing.

So when I was 12-years-old,
walking home from school,

I took a little detour
because I wanted to buy

my favorite sweets called Salty Feets.

I know they sound kind of awful,
but I absolutely love them.

They're basically these little salty
licorice bits in the shape of feet.

And now that I say it out loud,
I realize how terrible that sounds,

but be that as it may,
I absolutely love them.

So on my way into the store,
there was this grown white guy

in the doorway blocking my way.

So I tried to walk around him,
and as I did that, he stopped me

and he was staring at me,
and he spit in my face,

and he said, get out of my way
you little black bitch,

you little Paki bitch,
go back home where you came from.

I was absolutely horrified.
I was staring at him.

I was too afraid to wipe
the spit off my face,

even as it was mixing with my tears.

I remember looking around,
hoping that any minute now,

a grown-up is going to come
and make this guy stop.

But instead, people kept hurrying past me
and pretended not to see me.

I was very confused
because I was thinking,

well, my white people, come on!
Where are they? What's going on?

How come they're not
coming and rescuing me?

So, needless to say,
I didn't buy the sweets.

I just ran home as fast as I could.

Things were still okay, though, I thought.

As time went on, the more successful
I became, I eventually started attracting

harassment from brown people.

Some men in my parent's community
felt that it was unacceptable

and dishonorable for a woman
to be involved in music

and to be so present in the media.

So very quickly, I was starting to become
attacked at my own concerts.

I remember one of the concerts,
I was onstage, I lean into the audience

and the last thing I see is
a young brown face

and the next thing I know
some sort of chemical is thrown in my eyes

and I remember I couldn't really see
and my eyes were watering

but I kept singing anyway.

I was spit in the face in the streets
of Oslo, this time by brown men.

They even tried to
kidnap me at one point.

The death threats were endless.

I remember one older bearded guy
stopped me in the street one time,

and he said, the reason
I hate you so much

is because you make
our daughters think

they can do whatever they want.

A younger guy warned me
to watch my back.

He said music is un-Islamic
and the job of whores,

and if you keep this up,
you are going to be raped

and your stomach will be cut out so that
another whore like you will not be born.

Again, I was so confused.
I couldn't understand what was going on -- my brown people now starting to treat me like this. How come? Instead of bridging the worlds, the two worlds, I felt like I was falling between my two worlds. I suppose for me, spit was kryptonite. So by the time I was 17-years-old, the death threats were endless and the harassment was constant. It got so bad, at one point my mother sat me down and said, look, we can no longer protect you, we can no longer keep you safe. So you're going to have to go. So I bought a one-way ticket to London. I packed my suitcase, and I left. My biggest heartbreak at that point was that nobody said anything. I had a very public exit from Norway. My brown people, my white people, nobody said anything. Nobody said, hold on, this is wrong. Support this girl, protect this girl because she is one of us. Nope. Nobody said that. Instead, I felt like, you know at the airport, on the baggage