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Wedding in 2012: Anis and Anna-Maria Ferchichi
Photo: Eventpress / Meik Shot / DPA
The violence-glorifying, sexist Bushido?
Allegedly just a fictional character, at least that's what Anis Ferchichi portrays, who under this name became one of the most successful musicians in Germany.
The image of the tough gangsta rapper should not be much left after the current trial in which he is the most important witness against his long-term business partner Arafat Abou-Chaker.
Especially not according to his statement this Monday.
In the Berlin district court, Ferchichi reveals further details from his private life, which in the eyes of former companions probably qualify him as a weakling.
Which in truth, however, if the information is correct, speak for the purification of a family father.
Ferchichi is a talented speaker.
His stories make him appear in a bad light, but he describes calmly and in clear words how he left his wife Anna-Maria alone, what a bad husband and father he was.
And how he thinks about it today.
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Witness Bushido (mid-August)
Photo: PAUL ZINKEN / AFP
His mother died in April 2013.
"That was the beginning of a shaky time for me," says Ferchichi.
"I am an absolute mum's boy", her death "completely tore the floor from under his feet".
Around the same time, Arafat Abou-Chaker turned more and more to Islam, stopped drinking alcohol from one day to the next, and also "ordered" everyone else not to visit restaurants where alcohol was served.
In December 2014, he went to the Chiemsee to see a doctor with his wife and Arafat Abou-Chaker.
In the evening the three of them had dinner.
Anna-Maria's sweater slipped up her back so that a little bare skin was visible.
"There was immediately a huge argument with Arafat," says Ferchichi.
He insulted his wife: "You look like a whore!"
Instead of helping her, he agreed with Abou-Chaker.
"That was the stupidest decision of my life."
His wife jumped out of the window in fear
On the return trip to Berlin, the dispute continued.
Arafat called Anna-Maria a "devil".
And he himself just kept silent.
At home in Berlin, the situation between him and his wife had escalated.
"And then I raised my hand against my wife," said Ferchichi.
The next morning she and the children were gone.
When he returned home that afternoon after visiting the mosque, he found her packing.
"She was totally scared," says Ferchichi.
She told him that she would leave him and informed the police.
"I was very outraged. And she was so scared that she jumped out of the kitchen window on the first floor."
"Gang star rapper or not"
Then he called Arafat Abou-Chaker.
A little later, officials from the State Criminal Police Office came so that his wife could pack safely.
"And at some point there was a commotion in the courtyard because Arafat came like some Tasmanian devil."
Abou-Chaker yelled at his wife.
Police officers should have held him.
Anna-Maria Ferchichi, the children and the LKA left the house.
From the bathroom window he looked after them: "I see LKA officers carrying my children in their arms."
A sight he will not forget for a lifetime, "gang star rapper or not".
Lonely weeks followed.
"I was really exhausted," says Anis Ferchichi.
He had problems before and after, for example with the tax investigation.
"But in the end it's about money," he says, "somehow it doesn't matter."
The separation of his wife was his "personal low point".
When he told Abou-Chaker that he would fight for his wife and children, he only insulted him as a "dog".
That was the key moment for Ferchichi.
"Interpersonal he died for me that day."
"I hit her. It's my fault."
At some point the longed-for call from his wife finally came.
She told him coolly that she was pregnant.
"And I was so happy," says Ferchichi.
Now he went to her every weekend, she lived with the children with her mother near Delmenhorst.
Arafat Abou-Chaker had absolutely no understanding for this because a man does not run after a woman.
He saw it differently, says Ferchichi.
"It's my fault. I treated her ass. I hit her. It's my fault."
He wanted to save his family, he didn't want to end up like his father.
The father was alcoholic and violent, his mother threw her husband out.
Before his death in February 2016, he lived alone in an apartment in Berlin, one wall in the living room was covered over and over with photos of his family.
Ferchichi says the sight of it made him realize: "I have to get back together with my family."
In May 2015, his wife finally returned to Berlin with the children.
She made it clear: "I never want to have anything to do with Arafat again."
And from now on Bushido wanted to be a good husband and father.
He went to parents' evenings and didn't spend any more nights in the studio.
"I think I did pretty well."
It was the beginning of the end of his relationship with Arafat Abou-Chaker.
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