Sonita Alizadeh (@SonitaAlizadeh) : A woman who has defied both brutality and stereotypes

Son­ita Aliz­a­deh is an Afghan refugee. She is just 19 years old. But the hor­rors she has seen have gran­ted her a wis­dom that tran­scends her age. Her youth belies her exper­i­ences. These are exper­i­ences that no one, par­tic­u­larly chil­dren and adoles­cents, should suf­fer. She is also an incred­ible hip hop artist. Hip hop was inven­ted for people like Son­ita. The genre is a plat­form that elev­ates those mar­gin­al­ised in soci­ety. It breaks down bound­ar­ies.  It was con­ceived to be a voice for the voice­less and there is no group more mar­gin­al­ised and ali­en­ated than refugees. The sad irony is that those who fled from war in their home coun­tries then when reach­ing free­dom in demo­crat­ic coun­tries such as Bri­tain and then found that they had to fight anoth­er kind of war. That is the kind of war that encom­passes racism and the real­isa­tion that they are not wanted by all in the coun­tries that they ended up.

It is a long road from a war torn Afgh­anistan to first dis­cov­er­ing, and then util­ising Hip Hop as a means of speak­ing out against human rights trans­gres­sions. Son­ita epi­tom­ises the beauty of music as a whole, and in this case hip hop. It is hard to think of any­one who is the com­plete anti­thes­is of the ste­reo­type that is propag­ated about, and some­times by some rap­pers them­selves. Cer­tainly, myself included, we do not con­jure up the image of a teen­age muslim Afghan refugee when we think of rap. She still wears a hijab. She is cur­rently study­ing on a schol­ar­ship in the US.

In Afgha­nastan her fam­ily tried to sell her for $9,000 into a mar­riage she did not sanc­tion and did not want. This, an exper­i­ence that hap­pens to many women in numer­ous coun­tries across the globe, inspired her track ’Brides for sale’. Cer­tainly her per­son­al exper­i­ence explains the pro­found lyr­ics that give the song such deep­ness. She begs us to listen to her. Oth­ers echo that. This is some­thing we all need to hear if we are to open our eyes to the exper­i­ences of such women. This song is har­row­ing in its words.  “My voice shouldn’t be head, for it is against sharia. Women must remain silent. It is the city’s tra­di­tion. I scream to make up for a women’s silent. I scream on behalf of the deep wounds on my body”. This is cath­arsis in its truest form. “I am fif­teen from Her­at and suit­ors come, I am con­fused. Like all oth­er girls I am caged. I am seen only as a sheep to be devoured. Let me scream. I am tired of being silenced.” She wants the world to know the truth; the suf­fer­ing of women under an oppress­ive régime. The words are hard. But we must not turn our backs for this is pre­cisely what happened to her in Afgh­anistan. The world turned their col­lect­ive backs.

As a prac­tising Muslim, she clearly knows the Quar­an back to front, inside out. She wants to share her know­ledge because she stresses that she wishes that people knew that it doesn’t say women are for sale. Son­ita was put up for sale in order to accrue enough money for her broth­er to buy a bride. In an inter­view with the BBC she says that women like her, forced into mar­riage, view their hus­bands as rap­ists. This is because, of course, these men are often vir­tu­al strangers, and the act of uni­on is against their wishes and con­sent. At fif­teen, Son­ita was still a child for such adult under­tak­ings.

She says that to pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing repeatedly to oth­er young girls she attends many con­fer­ences and events to both speak and raise aware­ness. She, and oth­er young women like her, speak for people to hear their stor­ies, and, she stresses, will con­tin­ue to until they are heard by “Offi­cials and gov­ern­ments”.

Son­ita helps us to con­tex­tu­al­ise our prob­lems. Once we see what is hap­pen­ing under such oppress­ive regimes, some of our own prob­lems may feel a little bit smal­ler. While polit­ic­ally this coun­try is in dis­ar­ray, stor­ies such as these help us to remem­ber how lucky we are to be born in a first world demo­cracy, and how where we are born dic­tates our oppor­tun­it­ies, situ­ations, and even lifespan. We may at times detest our gov­ern­ment. We more than likely detest Don­ald Trump and the US gov­ern­ment. But we will not be bru­tal­ised for that. This indic­ates that we have a free­dom that people like Son­ita, at the time of her exist­ence in a state that not only did bru­tal­ise people, espe­cially did so to women.

She told the Columbia Tribune that becom­ing a rap­per was nev­er on her agenda. She just wanted to share her exper­i­ences. She had nev­er heard rap until work­ing in a gym and real­ised very quickly that it was a unique for­um to get her voice heard. Not only did she recog­nise it as a tool for social change, but found it to be “one of the most power­ful forces to share import­ant mes­sages”.

Son­ita wants to be a law­yer for women’s rights and human rights. And she wants people to know that “girls have power, and they can have a future”. Against the back­drop of a dark past, she wants a bright future. Son­ita is well on the way to achiev­ing this goal. Com­pare the fact that she is study­ing at one of the best uni­ver­sit­ies in the world to the shock­ing rev­el­a­tion that she was just 10 when her fam­ily first tried to sell her and you have a young woman who is already a start­ling suc­cess.  She feels that when girls are mar­ried at very young ages they are being raped and the world needs to know this.

An Ira­ni­an doc­u­ment­ary maker, Rokh­sareh Ghaem Maghami, filmed her over the peri­od of three years, and doc­u­mented her story in a remark­able film “Son­ita”. She filmed this to escape from the mar­riage being planned for her. The video for “Brides for Sale” also emerged from this even though it is illeg­al for women to sing pub­lic­ally in Iran, where she was resid­ing at the time. This turned out to be the key to free­dom. Not only was it pop­u­lar with women in Afgh­anistan but ulti­mately altered the path of her life.  She was picked up by a char­ity Strong­heart, and was sub­sequently offered a stu­dent visa to study in the United States.

It was Iran where she first dis­covered rap. She first heard Ira­ni­an rap­per Yas, while clean­ing bath­rooms while she taught her­self lit­er­acy hav­ing being declined an edu­ca­tion pre­vi­ously. She also heard Eminem, a hip hop act she loved. She star­ted writ­ing her own songs and won a US com­pet­i­tion with a song that urged people to vote in elec­tions in Afgh­anistan. At just 16,after win­ning the com­pet­i­tion, her moth­er begged her to return home because she has found a poten­tial hus­band. By selling her own daugh­ter she thought she could raise the $9000 dowry to pay the dowry for her son’s mar­riage

Son­ita now she lives in Utah and attends Wasatch Academy on a full schol­ar­ship, and con­tin­ues to write songs. She is an inspir­a­tion for women glob­ally who are in the situ­ation she has been in. Polit­ic­ally and cre­at­ively she is a fig­ure­head. But where does she stand with her fam­ily? Iron­ic­ally though, whilst her Moth­er ini­tially hated her daughter’s choice of expres­sion, the New York Times has said she is now her biggest fan.

The fol­low­ing two tabs change con­tent below.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Kate Taylor

Kate Taylor is a Lon­don based writer whose Interests are based primar­ily on music and art and also the philo­sophies and polit­ics that accom­pany them. In addi­tion she has an Msc in psy­cho­logy, has worked as a ther­ap­ist, and paints abstract art pieces.

Latest posts by Kate Taylor (see all)

• NOT FRA­GILE LIKE A FLOWER, FRA­GILE LIKE A BOMB | ‘MOV­ING ON’ BY KATE TAYLOR — Janu­ary 2, 2024
• NOT FRA­GILE LIKE A FLOWER, FRA­GILE LIKE A BOMB… DEAL­ING WITH LOSS BY KATE TAYLOR — July 27, 2023
• NOT FRA­GILE LIKE A FLOWER, FRA­GILE LIKE A BOMB | ‘CHANGES’ BY KATE TAYLOR — June 28, 2023

Read More:

Exclus­ive Film: Your World News Presents ‘Hip Hop, White Suprem­acy & Cap­it­al­ism’ New Mix­tape: Street Games Vol.1(@hiphopchess) (@djrobflow) Epis­ode #23: Pop­pin’ Cham­pagne (@dioninfinite) @PharoaheMonch Post Trau­mat­ic Stress Dis­order: Break­ing The Silence on Men­tal Health @nursingclio Rap vs Hip Hop: What is the dif­fer­ence?