Why I chose fine arts over medicine

My father is a surgeon. He built his own hospital in Syria. The plan, never really discussed because it didn't need to be, was that I would study medicine and one day take care of it.

What most people didn't know about him is that he painted. Oil on canvas. A sunset over the pyramids hung in our house in West Germany for years. As a teenager in Syria he painted cinema posters by hand, the big ones that went up outside the theatre. He wanted to study fine arts. He went to Spain to do it. Then he chose the safer road, and became very good at it.

So when I told him I wanted to go to the Faculty of Fine Arts, he said no. Study medicine. Take care of the hospital.

I left home with a note on the table saying I was applying anyway.

I'm not telling this as a story about rebellion. I'm telling it because I think about that painting a lot. He had the same thing in him that I had. He put it down because he had responsibilities, and he gave me the chance to not put it down. That's the version I believe now.

Years later I co-founded 4SPACE in Dubai with a friend. We've built three hundred spaces. Some of them people fly in to see. Every one of them started as a drawing.

I still can't take care of a hospital. But I think he knows what I did instead.

— Firas