Tareq Baconi’s Memoir Weaves Together Palestinian History, Queer Identity, and a Search for Home
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A new memoir, Fire in Every Direction, published last month, offers a deeply personal and political exploration of Palestinian identity, queer love, and the enduring weight of displacement, as recounted by political analyst Tareq Baconi. The book chronicles Baconi’s journey from a childhood marked by refugee status in Jordan to his eventual return to a homeland shadowed by decades of conflict, all while grappling with his sexuality in a society often hostile to it.
A Family’s Displacement and a Haunted Homecoming
The narrative begins with a poignant image: Baconi, standing with his husband near the family home in Haifa, the port city his grandmother fled in terror in 1948. She carried little with her – a Bible, a crucifix, and a week’s worth of clothes – but the memory of that home remained a powerful force across generations. Baconi followed his grandmother’s directions, finding the building almost exactly as she had left it. “I want to imagine it empty, loyal, waiting for our return. I want it to exist outside of time, as if everything stopped that April,” he writes, revealing a desire to preserve the past untouched by the present. Simply locating the house became a tangible connection to his family’s history and a way to “bend time” and hold his grandmother’s experiences within his own life.
A Love Story “Absent From the World”
At its core, Fire in Every Direction is a love story – a revelation Baconi felt compelled to share because it was “completely absent from the world around me.” The memoir details his first love with a boy named Ramzi, a relationship forged amidst the political and personal repression of his upbringing. Baconi initially conceived of the book as an extended letter to Ramzi, recounting feelings he struggled to articulate as a teenager. This intimate foundation allowed him to create a vulnerable and unsparing portrait of his younger self.
Baconi’s path to self-discovery was shaped by a childhood spent as a refugee in Jordan. His family’s history of “generational flight and dispossession” – from Haifa to Beirut, then Amman, and finally London – forms a crucial backdrop to his personal struggles. He recounts the “silences and trauma” within his home, a consequence of living in a country where Palestinian refugees were expected to renounce politics to secure refuge. His mother, a former political activist exiled from Lebanon, embodied this tension, suppressing her passions to ensure her family’s safety.
“Our parents’ lives had come unhinged too many times, and – rightly or wrongly – they decided it was enough for us to have been given shelter,” Baconi writes, explaining the unspoken agreement to remain silent in exchange for security. This enforced quietude extended to Baconi’s own emerging identity. He found himself an outsider in Amman, drawn to solitary pursuits like searching for tortoises rather than participating in traditional Palestinian boyhood activities. “In some ways queerness served to put me out of the norm,” he explained, forcing him to confront his difference in a patriarchal and homophobic society.
Radicalization and a Reclaiming of Identity
The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 proved to be a turning point. A conversation with a British journalist on a flight back to Amman ignited a sense of political awakening. Baconi realized he was “an Arab man who was scared and filled with foreboding,” a feeling he hadn’t fully acknowledged before. Initially seeking refuge in the perceived freedoms of cosmopolitan London, he eventually understood that neither his Palestinian identity nor his sexuality could be abandoned. He began to explore both, discovering a hidden queer subculture in the Middle East and delving into the historical context of his family’s displacement.
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Challenging “Pinkwashing” and Advocating for Queer Palestinian Voices
Baconi’s work extends beyond personal narrative to challenge the practice of “pinkwashing,” where Israel attempts to portray itself as an LGBTQ+ haven to deflect criticism of its policies towards Palestinians. He argues that this tactic “erases the existence and activism of queer Palestinians,” framing them as “foreign implants” rather than recognizing their Indigenous roots. “It puts queer people in a very difficult position,” he stated, highlighting the complexities of navigating identity within a politically charged landscape.
A Memoir Written Amidst Genocide
The publication of Fire in Every Direction coincided with the ongoing conflict in Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, a situation Baconi describes as a moment of “genocide.” He acknowledged the difficulty of releasing a personal story amidst such widespread suffering, stating, “life is continuing, and on the other hand, it shouldn’t be.” However, the book’s chronicle of decades of Palestinian loss and displacement provides crucial context to the current crisis.
Despite the tragedies recounted, Fire in Every Direction is ultimately a story of love – for family, for Palestine, for queer culture, and for the possibility of a future where individuals are free to embrace all aspects of their identity. Baconi hopes the book will be translated into Arabic, acknowledging the potential risks and uncertainties, stating, “It’s either the stupidest or the bravest thing I’ve done. I really don’t know what the implications are.” His family has been supportive, a circumstance he recognizes as not necessarily representative of the experiences of other queer Palestinians in the region. “This book is disruptive in that way, because it’s not only telling, but it’s unapologetic in the telling. It’s saying this is what it is to be queer and Palestinian, and this is how I hold these politics together.” It is a call for “an imagined future where none of us must cover, or absent, a part of ourselves to live.”
