Fresh from her second victory in the world’s most over-the-top pop contest, the ‘nomad from the Atlas mountains’ talks about life in Sweden, the pain of competing and her search for a purpose
, is the fleeting habitat of the Eurovision elite – the Langham hotel in central London. Opposite the BBC, it is perfectly placed for the wave of broadcast interviews that ensue, and the ideal environment – subtle luxury in neutral tones – to be totally overwhelmed. The 39-year-old shouldn’t be overawed, though, since she has won before, in 2012, making her the first woman to win twice in the competition’s history.and, as I type, it is only Monday.
On that: she was born Lorine Zineb Nora Talhaoui in Stockholm and both her parents were first-generation immigrants from Morocco. Her mother arrived in Sweden at 14 with nothing, fleeing an arranged marriage. She met a man and had Loreen, the eldest of six, when she was 16. Loreen hares off briefly to tell me about her great-grandmother: “Her husband got killed in the war, she was beautiful, she was also very young. The family wanted her to remarry. She didn’t want this.
One sibling is an artist, another a surgeon, another works in marketing, another has his own business. She makes a pretty indisputable points about migrants and refugees, grounded in first-hand experience. “You want to have a purpose as a person, you want to feel like you matter. You don’t want to sit around and not do anything. When we have our immigrants coming in to Sweden, we just make them sit there and wait. Let them have a purpose. Let them be a part of this society.
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