Book 08 · The Ache of Distance
Farha
فرحة
Poems inspired by SNX's songs, retold by AIA Labs.
From the song
Farha فرحة by SNX
A Moroccan Darija piece that plays with the word for joy, which is also a girl's name. People ask him why he lives so heavily and tell him to ease up. He asks them why. They ask what her name is, and the answer is joy, as if it were a person you could point to. He says what he learned in life is not what made him happy. Another voice asks where joy is, where it can be found, and says he wants her to leave the way he did, since it is neither me nor him. A hard-hearted figure appears, and a mother, and then the chorus gives the word for joy again and again, with a few no-no-no answers around it.
Deeper meaning
The joke of the name carries a serious question: if joy is a person, where is she, and who has her? The song treats happiness as something others keep telling him to have and that he cannot find. The refrain starts to sound like a prayer said by someone who has stopped expecting an answer.