Opening with repetitions of the line, “Numb, I forget my spine, how to sit with pride”, the song reminds us of how trauma lives in the bones, nestles its way in to find a spot to sink its teeth into. It suffocates. Healing forces us to relearn connection, rehome our sense of self inside the body. Zahra treads carefully between the borders of strength and vulnerability, back and forth, as she searches for what it means to recover. She comes back to the old adage, again and again: “It’ll pass they say, time heals they say”. There’s tension in the pause between these words. A complexity of feeling. Her voice loops the lyric in flow, mirroring the current of these empty comforts—well intentioned though they be—that washes over the unbearable strength it takes for survivors to recover in the aftermath of abuse.
This is a song about survival. It will leave you sitting with, reckoning with, the word resilience. Turning its syllables over and over in your head, wrapping your tongue around its sounds that leave a bitter taste. What does it mean to be strong? What’s more, why is this continually asked of survivors—don’t we deserve to be soft for once, to be supported? To allow ourselves the elusive rest we crave and seldom find.
In the centre, it unfolds. “It’s a choice”, she sings with steadiness, assurance. “To help him heal while we orbit, it’s a choice.” It’s easier to lose yourself in the spiral, to let the vastness swallow you. But in the silence, she affirms, there is one thing for them to hold onto—each other’s orbit. Zahra and her son ground themselves in the other’s gravity. “Connected by him the sun”, the moon locates her home in the surrounding chaos, realised, with such tenderness, in the bond shared between the two.
To survive is to hold on to what you can find. Hold on to healing. The passage of time. Hold on to the drums, the rituals, the water. A cleansing from all that came before. To hope. And through the darkness in which she sings, Zahra’s desire to provide protection, peace, and light for her child is the driving force behind her new sound. This is a work of boundless care. It fills rooms and rooms. The love she carries emanates, echoes reverberating in the slow build of steel pan beats, in hands beating against the chest, against the water. A prayer for when there are no words to say.
With thanks to: Ithar MK, Alice Dann, Alyssa Steiner, Bea Macdonald. Tasnim Mahdy, Fusion Arts + Film Oxford
Song written, performed and produced by Zahra Haji Fath Ali Tehrani
![WAITING [OUT JULY 20TH]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/579392e72e69cf39f3ac8135/1656970829637-XENID9YB0ALIC8UZJDC6/zahra_waiting1.jpg)
