Sporting a long leather coat and western jeans under a headscarf,
Soosan Feroz looks like many modern women in Kabul.
But she is a surprising new phenomenon in this conservative Islamic
country -- the nation's first female rapper.
Her lyrics though are not unfamiliar for many of her fellow
countrywomen -- she raps of rape, abuse and atrocities that Afghan
women have endured during decades of war in a country gripped by
poverty.
"My raps are about the sufferings of women in my country, the pains
of the war that we have endured and the atrocities of the war,"
Feroz told AFP in an interview in the office of a local company
that is helping her record her first album, between local
performances including at the US embassy in Kabul.
Like most fellow Afghans, the 23-year-old says her life is filled
with bitterness -- memories of war, bombing and a life at refugee
camps in neighboring Iran and Pakistan.
She was taken to Pakistan as a child by her parents and later to
Iran, escaping a bloody civil war at home in 1990s.
Two years after the 2001 US-led invasion of her war-scarred nation
that toppled the Taliban, the then-teenager returned home with her
family.
She worked as a carpet weaver with her other siblings for a living
until she discovered her new talent.
Told that rap and hip hop had become a way for many artists around
the world to express daily hardships in their lives, Feroz says:
"If rap singing is a way to tell your miseries, Afghans have a lot
to say.
"That's why I chose to be a rapper."
She recalls her woes at Iranian refugee camps in her first recorded
piece of music, "Our neighbours", which has been posted on Youtube
and viewed nearly 100,000 times:
"What happened to us in the neighbouring country?
"We became 'the dirty Afghan'
"At their bakeries we were pushed at the back of the queue."
The lyrics are borne from personal experience, Feroz said. "As a
child when I was going to bring bread from our neighbourhood
bakery, the Iranians would tell me, 'go back, you dirty
Afghan'.
"I would be the last one in the line to get my bread," she
said.
Millions of Afghans still live in Iran and Pakistan, which together
hosted about seven million refugees after the former Soviet Union
invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
Feroz was too young to remember the bloody battles of the 1980s
between the Russian soldiers and freedom fighters known as
mujahedin but her first song is full of war tales, with one line
proclaiming: "We went to Europe for a better life (but) in refugee
camps we rotted."
Thousands of Afghans put their lives on the line every year to
reach Europe through dangerous and illegal routes on land and sea.
Those who make it often spend years in isolated refugee camps.
Afghan pop star Farid Rastagar has offered to help the young artist
release an album, the first song of which will be released in
January.
One of the songs is called "Naqis-Ul Aql" which can be translated
as "deficient-in-mind" -- a common belief about women among Afghan
men.
"In this rap, she sings about the miseries of the women in
Afghanistan, about abuses and wrong beliefs that still exists about
women," Rastagar told AFP.
Afghan women have made some progress since the fall of the Taliban
but many still suffer horrific abuse including so-called 'honour
killings" for percieved sexual disobedience.
Feroz, the daughter of a former civil servant and an illiterate
housewife who remarkably let their daughter sing, has already made
scores of enemies not only among conservatives but within her own
family.
After releasing her first song on the internet, Feroz's uncles and
their families have shunned her, accusing her of bringing shame on
them.
Others, mostly anonymous callers, have threatened to kill her.
"What's my fault?" she asks. "I always receive phone calls from
unknown men who say I'm a bad girl and they will kill me," she
says, her dark eyes welling with tears.
Sitting next to her is her father, Abdul Ghafaar Feroz, who says he
prides himself on being her "personal secretary".
"I'm not deterred," Feroz said, her father nodding his head in
agreement. "Somebody had to start this, I did and I don't regret it
and I will continue. I want to be the voice of women in my
country."
