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This Side of Innocence by Rashid Al-Daif: book review


This Side of Innocence (1997 in Arabic and 2001 in English) by Lebanese author, Rashid Al-Daif, is not a typical novel in the sense of form or flow. It is more of a stream-of-consciousness technique in which one man’s paranoia and insecurities emerge on the page. There is no mention of time, space, or location (city or country), except that the narration begins in a room.

The narrator has a Japanese watch with Arabic numerals. He has a wife and son. We know that he has committed infidelity, at least once. That much the reader knows. He is about to be interrogated by four men in civilian clothes, in relation to a torn picture: “Who tore the picture?” they ask.

The narrator’s thoughts lead the reader to believe that he is innocent – “how do you justify to those bent on getting accurate information about someone … how do you justify to them that you know nothing.” Yet the narration is fraught with details of inconsequence or omission, or details about how he should conduct himself so that the interrogators believe him to be innocent. And then, by the narrator’s admission, he sets off “a chain reaction of mistakes.”

And what is the significance of the picture?

At some point he is in his home ...“after they led me there so my wife and I could make coffee for them and we could finish our conversation, with my son sitting next to me …” The reader learns little about the narrator’s wife and son, “but before they left, with her, they told me not to go into the living room at all.” And then he has, in his hand, a skewer – or was it a knife – as he plots, in his mind, to kill his interrogators when they return. Why was his wife so frightened of him, he asks himself.

The reader is never absolutely certain whether the anticipated violent interrogation actually occurred – nor of the actual stark and disturbing realities of what happened to his wife and son – and yet the answers are there, in the narrator’s mind and mental state. The reader must draw conclusions about what happened and whether the narrator is innocent – or which side of innocence the narrator is on.  

The novel contains a six-page Afterword by two authors, who describe Al-Daif’s style as “philosophical, psychological, epistemological” and “idiosyncratic.” The exposition is in understanding “What is it that makes us commit such deadly mistakes?” There is a plot, implied action, and a paranoiac message in this brief 146-page novel: People bring problems unto themselves.

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