Metaprogramming - defining a function

New to Julia
9

I’m still not getting a solution.

I am looking for the following:

julia> function f(a)
       local m = :($a)
       m
       end
f (generic function with 1 method)

julia> f(1)
1

but when I replace a with Symbol("a"):

julia> function f(a)
       local m = :($(Symbol("a")))
       m
       end
f (generic function with 1 method)

julia> f(1)
:a

What do I have to do with Symbol("a") in order to get 1 instead of :a?