Rapper Jelassi shares her poignant story of being kidnapped to Tunisia at eight to escape a life of addiction and chaos. Her journey back to Sweden took five years, marked by struggles with PTSD and self-medication. Despite a tumultuous upbringing, Jelassi transforms her experiences into powerful art, capturing the resilience of a 'dandelion child' with haunting precision.
Rapper Jelassi's Harrowing Childhood: A Tale of Survival and Artistry
Kidnapped to Escape a Life of Misery
Rapper Jelassi was kidnapped to Tunisia at the age of eight. The purpose: to save her from a life of addiction and misery, she reveals in Sommar i P1.
It took five years for Fatima Jelassi and her twin sister to return home to Sweden, from what was supposed to be a two-week summer vacation at their grandmother's.
Their father left the girls and returned to Sweden. Their mother, trapped in a bottomless spiral of addiction and mental illness, failed to bring them back.
When they finally returned, they had to fend for themselves, without protection from an adult world that constantly failed them despite their cries for help.
Diagnoses, self-medication, PTSD, a constant escape from a chaotic upbringing—Jelassi's life has been tough from the start. She narrates it beautifully; it's music, it's art, her words. The life of a 'dandelion child' is captured with eerie precision, in a script where not a single beat is out of place.