Fire in Every Direction (A Memoir)

“A book filled with love, from and for family, for the region, Palestine, and queer culture.” —The Guardian

From renowned Palestinian scholar Tareq Baconi, a powerful memoir of political and queer awakening, of impossible love amidst generations of displacement, and what it means to return home.

Both a queer love story and a coming-of-age tale that spans countries and continents, Fire in Every Direction balances humor and loss, nostalgia and hope, as it takes us from Haifa to Beirut to Amman to London, and from 1948 to the present. Tareq Baconi crafts a deeply intimate, unforgettable portrait of how a political consciousness—desire and resistance—is passed down through generations.

In 1948, Tareq’s grandmother, Eva, would flee Haifa as Zionist militias seized the city. In the late 1970s, she would flee Beirut with her daughter, Rima, as the country was in the throes of a civil war. In Amman, the family would eventually obtain the comfort of middle class life—still, a young Tareq would feel trapped: by cultures of silence, by a sense of not belonging, by his own growing awareness that he is in love with his childhood best friend, Ramzi.

After relocating to London for college, Tareq hopes to put aside his past, and begins to work through an understanding of self as a queer man. Yet as the Iraq War radicalizes young people around the world towards anti-war protest, history comes back to him: hushed whispers overheard, stories of his mother’s years as an activist in Beirut and her return to Palestine during a moment of calm. Forced to grapple with what it means to live in liminal spaces, Tareq traces the journey of his family before him, and returns to Palestine to grapple with what it means to reclaim what has been silenced,

An “intimate, mesmerizing meditation on dispossession” (Omar El Akkad, New York Times bestselling author), Fire in Every Direction will stay with you long after you turn the final page.