Guests
Paradise & Diverse
(143Band)
Film: Sonita
When they received the Afghan music award as the best rap artists at the “Rumi Music Awards 2014”, Paradise was wearing a shoulder-free dress. This was the reason users of social media started sending her hate-mails, insulting her, and accusing her of persuading other women to become prostitutes. Because she feared for her life, Paradise stayed enclosed in her apartment for a long time. She felt imprisoned. "I died a little bit every day," the 26-year-old young woman says.
But she also received a lot of positive reactions, especially from women: they express their admiration and ask for tips on how they could become rappers themselves. Once a young woman even wrote that she was now allowed to study. Her parents had said, "If this woman can rap in Afghanistan, why should our daughter not be able to study?"
Exactly for such reasons, Paradise and Diverse want to continue with their rap. But it was also necessary to leave their country in the summer of 2015. After a long time of waiting and saving money, they finally got a visa and flew to Europe. Now they live together in a room of a refugee camp in Berlin. They have applied for asylum and attend German language courses.
Their current texts tell of an Afghan generation in a permanent state of war, struggling for a better future and for women's rights.