In the Beginning Was I, a novel by Mahmoud Farra, paints social tales intertwined with the traits and circumstances of its characters, all rendered in a captivating literary style that reflects the author’s memories of his grandfather and father. Farra’s mastery of craft is evident throughout its pages, especially in the symbolic, philosophical resonance of the closing sentence that concludes the novel: “I was the world, and the world was me… In the beginning, I was there, and in the beginning was… I.”
This phrase is delivered after readers have been guided, across the novel’s pages, to a tense crescendo of suspense, existential visions, and psychological unraveling. This taut nerve vibrates from the novel’s first page to its last.
The novel’s events take place across five cities — California, Paris, Nice, Damascus, and Beirut — and from these settings, a story emerges that introduces us to a masterful storyteller, one who is not only an experienced narrator but also an insightful teller of events, histories, and incidents.
It begins with a story of a forty-something immigrant living with his girlfriend, who dreams of a girl standing alone on a beach and follows her. Suddenly, he finds himself in the narrow, shadowy alleys of Old Damascus, guided by this mysterious girl into the same dark street that haunts him. This dream draws him back to Damascus, where everyone seems to be awaiting him: his sister Hanan, who tells him they unearthed a buried chest while digging in the garden; Abu al-Nour, who has taken over the house for security reasons; Abu Jassem, the tenant on the ground floor; and the village mukhtar, the father of Lamees — the beloved of Mamdouh, our central character.
The novel holds us in its grip with suspenseful and dreamlike episodes that remain tethered to reality, turning Damascus into an earthly paradise. “The scent of the place filled my being,” we read, “a distinct aroma that lingers in most Damascus houses — a mixture of earth, air, ghee, and soap…”
Farra’s skill is evident in his careful attention to craft as the story of a love affair unfolds between the father and a French woman named Rose, who had once been in love with a French officer. Following the army to Syria, she opened a beauty salon and met Ahmad, a young Damascene boy selling raspberries. They fell in love — first with each other, then with the taste of raspberries. The story progresses until Ahmad works in Rose’s salon and stands up to the French officer who insults her dignity.
In this novel, women seem to shift before our eyes — Lamis becomes Isabelle; they vanish, then Rose appears, all part of a hallucinatory exchange. The author plays a game with us, unveiling one character and then concealing her, only to reintroduce another, a cycle that continues until the novel’s end. Every character steps into the spotlight at precisely the right moment, then withdraws gracefully so another may take their place, allowing the story to flow like a well-rehearsed performance.
Farra skillfully applies social psychology to depict historical and contemporary events spanning from the French mandate period to the present, all told in a style that is thrilling and suspenseful, yet never cheap or excessive.
This is a novel infused with a new spirit, shape, and technique — rich with real and surreal happenings, dreams, and future visions. It introduces us to a new literary voice that knows the way to our hearts. Let us read it together, hoping it will add something valuable to our cultural landscape.
Thank you, dear Mahmoud, and congratulations on your valuable work. I read it with great attention. Beyond its insightful content, it is also beautifully written.
Though I have not recently read many Arabic works, I can say — based on my previous readings — that you have pioneered a new style, even a new school, in the art of the novel.
Once the emotions stirred by this first reading have settled, I intend to read it again in order to catch thoughts that may have escaped me the first time. I also plan to explore its content more deeply, especially as it masterfully addresses some of the most important scientific topics that lie at the heart of my academic and professional background, particularly my interest in reading literature through the lens of psychoanalysis.
My heartfelt congratulations to you, dear Mahmoud. I genuinely hope this is only the first of many works to come.
If pain is the body’s signal, an alert to some hidden disorder, and if hunger is the language through which it tells us it needs nourishment — then what is it that desire, with its persistent insistence, is crying out for? What lack or imbalance is it trying to draw our attention to?
“Most of our bodily ailments,” say the advocates of psychosomatic medicine, “are rooted in the psyche. We carry our illnesses within ourselves, holding them inside — yet with the help of medication…”
…These are a few passages from the novel In the Beginning It Was Me by the Syrian author Mahmoud Al-Farra.
This is his literary debut, though by profession he is a teacher of mathematics and chemistry. What is most intriguing is that this novel belongs to the literature of free association and fantasy, bearing hallmarks of surrealism, like hallucinatory dreams that sweep us through a web of impossible, dreamlike visions. Its story unfolds in Syria, yet outside of time and place.
The novel raises numerous questions about the legitimacy of blending reality with surrealism, a style steeped in the bizarre and irrational, perhaps a kind of writing rarely seen before.
The author is also married to the Syrian visual artist Sawsan Bawab, creating a fascinating harmony between two contrasting worlds — one that undoubtedly fuels their creativity and enriches the work they produce together.
A few moments ago, I finished reading the novel — my progress delayed by the distractions and inevitable urgencies of daily life. Two points stand out. The first is the novel’s beautiful, clean language, free of bumps or flaws, making it an easy and inviting read. The second is its gripping sense of suspense, which spurs you onward and invites you to keep turning the page, though the realities of life sometimes pull me away.
As for the subject matter, the keys to its reading lie in its allusions and psychological undercurrents, which can guide the reader toward what the author aims to convey — beginning with the dreams that liberate a person from all the constraints of waking life (as though one lives two lives), and reaching all the way to the power of memory — both individual and collective — that governs destinies and steers them in a single, preordained direction. This sense of fatalism, which I don’t believe you consciously examined, made me ponder the idea of repeated lives (reincarnation). Perhaps these allusions are the novel’s core, for they controlled the flow of the narrative and infused the events with suspense.
The novel, with its Damascene heart, remains true to the spirit of the East, particularly in its fantastical elements, which are full of mystery. One can’t help but feel as though they are stepping into a story captured on film or witnessing the novel’s closing scenes amid an enchanted realm of fairies and sorceresses — a wondrous world thrown open to limitless imagination. I don’t usually favor these kinds of worlds in fiction, not for any particular reason, but simply out of personal taste. Perhaps these worlds can be explained by their basis in dreams, which naturally transcend logic, or maybe they point to the human soul itself, yearning to live a life beyond its historical moment of limitation and helplessness.
Thank you, dear Mahmoud Farra, for the gift of this novel — and for the pleasure of reading it.
As a literature teacher, I often tell my students that some novels are meant to be studied, while others are intended to be felt. ‘In the Beginning was I’ by Mahmoud Farra belongs, without question, to the latter category. It’s not a novel that engages the intellect but quietly reaches into the soft, private corners of the self we often keep hidden.
I picked up this book out of simple curiosity. What I didn’t expect was to be drawn into an intensely personal, meditative journey. Farra doesn’t take us on a conventional path of travel and adventure; instead, he offers an inward descent—a return to the self when it fractures across places, relationships, and memories. From California and Paris to Damascus and Beirut, the novel doesn’t romanticize its locations, but uses them as emotional and existential markers in the life of its protagonist.
At the story’s heart is a man in his forties, haunted by a recurring dream of a girl on a beach. His journey, however, is not about finding her but finding himself. What begins as a physical escape becomes a search for identity, rootedness, and the meaning of absence. Old Damascus, in particular, becomes a mirror for all he has lost, while Rose, the French woman, becomes more than a love interest. She’s a symbol of the life unlived, of love that exists more in imagination than in reality.
One of the elements that impressed me most was Farra’s handling of dream and reality. As someone who often explores this tension in the classroom, I appreciated how he blurs the boundaries between both to reveal deeper emotional truths. His language is lyrical yet unpretentious, and the emotional honesty in the protagonist’s inner monologue reminded me of why we read literature in the first place: to better understand ourselves.
The protagonist’s strained relationship with his father shapes his emotional dislocation. His father’s silence and emotional distance leave lasting wounds, influencing his search for identity and connection. This quiet, unresolved bond mirrors inherited pain and the longing for rootedness and understanding.
What stayed with me most, though, was the novel’s portrayal of what it means to live “in-between”; between cultures, between timelines, between who we were and who we are becoming. As someone who has felt that same tension in my life, I found the novel resonant and quietly affirming.
The line that lingered with me long after closing the book was: “In the beginning was I”
It doesn’t read as a bold declaration, but as a soft return to the self, longing, and the raw material from which meaning is made.
I’ll recommend this novel to my students and anyone who has ever felt lost in their own life and wondered where the story of self truly begins.
Dimah AlQassab
