In a deeply personal new memoir, author and political analyst Tareq Baconi braids together the threads of his queer identity and his family's Palestinian history of exile and dispossession. The book, Fire in Every Direction, published last month, serves as both an intimate love letter and a searing political testament.
A Journey to Haifa and a History of Loss
Seven decades after his grandmother Eva fled Haifa in 1948, Baconi retraced her steps to the family home near the sea. Accompanied by his husband, he found the building almost unchanged from her descriptions. He chose not to ring the bell, preferring to hold onto the idea of the home waiting, frozen in time from the moment his grandmother left. This poignant pilgrimage symbolised his quest to connect his present with a past defined by the Nakba—the catastrophic displacement of Palestinians.
The memoir chronicles a generational journey of flight: from Haifa to Beirut, then to Amman, Jordan, where Baconi grew up as a refugee. In Jordan, his family lived under an unspoken pact of silence, the price paid for the shelter offered by a host nation that demanded Palestinians renounce political activism. His mother, a former firebrand, suppressed her politics, embodying the forced quiet that permeated their lives.
Queerness, First Love, and Forced Margins
At its heart, Baconi describes the book as a love story between two boys, a narrative he felt was absent from the world around him. He charts his early sense of difference in Amman, skipping football to look for tortoises and yearning for a doll in a glittery gown.
"In some ways queerness served to put me out of the norm. It forced me into the margins," Baconi reflects. Bullied at school, he found profound connection and friendship with a boy he pseudonymously calls Ramzi. Their bond, closer than brotherhood, shattered when Baconi confessed his love in their final school year, leading to gossip and his subsequent move to London to study engineering.
Initially, he saw London as a cosmopolitan escape from a community that rejected his sexuality. However, the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 became a pivotal moment of political awakening. On a flight back to Amman, filled with journalists, a conversation made him realise his Palestinian identity was as intrinsic and unshakeable as his queerness.
Excavating Silences and Confronting Pinkwashing
This awakening spurred him to academically reclaim his history, leading to his respected work as a scholar and his book Hamas Contained. He later lived in Ramallah and finally visited Haifa with his husband—a partner his grandmother never knew about.
The memoir is strikingly frank about familial conflict and reconciliation. When he came out to his father, Fadi, his mother pre-emptively sedated his coffee. Fadi's initial reaction was brutally painful: "I wish you had the decency to let me die not knowing you were like this." Yet, love ultimately prevailed, and Fadi later became a devoted father-in-law.
Baconi’s work directly challenges what critics term Israeli "pinkwashing"—the portrayal of Israel as an LGBTQ+ haven against a backdrop of Palestinian homophobia. He argues this narrative erases indigenous queer Palestinians and frames their identities as foreign implants.
While the book was largely finished before the 7 October 2023 attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza, Baconi acknowledges the struggle of publishing during a crisis many label genocidal. His family’s timeline, "etched in massacres," provides crucial historical context for the present.
Ultimately, Fire in Every Direction is a testament to love and an imagined future where no one must hide part of themselves to live. Baconi’s family has supported the book, though he notes this is "not necessarily representative" for other queer Palestinians. The memoir, he says, is either "the stupidest or the bravest thing I’ve done," as he considers its potential reception in an Arabic translation.
