When Farah El Neihum was 17 and living in Meath, her mother went to Libya to become health minister. The teenager was in the throes of Leaving Cert-induced anxiety as her mum temporarily left the family home in Julianstown to return to her native country. Following the overthrow and death of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, she would spend a year as the country’s interim health minister.
The bubbly 27-year-old musician now known as Farah Elle was also born in Libya, and lived with her family in Benghazi until she was 18 months old. She now looks back on that tumultuous period of her teens with a lot more perspective.
“It all happened within two days,” she recalls when we meet at her friend’s home