Fire In Every Direction (a Memoir)

By (author) Baconi, Tareq
Short description/annotation:
From the renowned Palestinian scholar, a memoir of political and queer awakening, of impossible love amidst generations of displacement, and what it means to return home.
Description:

''Moving and generous''
Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost

''Luminous, moving, and achingly beautiful''
Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King

''I am forever changed after reading this book''
Javier Zamora, author of Solito

''A deeply inspiring and absorbing read''
Mark Gevisser, author of The Pink Line

''Spending time with the real people in Fire in Every Direction is a delight''
Rabih Alameddine, author of An Unnecessary Woman

Both a love story and a coming-of-age tale that spans countries and continents, Fire in Every Direction balances humour and loss, nostalgia and hope, as it takes us from the Middle East 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 would flee Haifa as Zionist militias seized the city. In the late 1970s, she would flee Beirut with her daughter, 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, Tareq hopes to put aside his past. Yet as the Iraq War radicalizes young people around the world towards anti-war protest, history comes back to him.

Living between the region and London, Tareq fits in neither and feels alienated from both. Queerness is policed back in Amman, just as his Palestinian-ness is abroad. These gradual estrangements escalate, forcing him to grapple with what it means to live in liminal spaces, and rethink the meaning of home.

Review quote:
In Fire in Every Direction, we not only see how the oppression of a people has affected one Palestinian family, but how oppression in all forms - colonialism, patriarchy, homophobia, to name a few - creates dishonesty and masks within all of us. Tareq Baconi offers us a love letter, a blueprint on how to craft a life that questions the present, dreaming a better future in the process. By reading this beautifully honest memoir, we can learn to shed what must be shed in order to regain an allegiance toward justice, toward freedom, toward a liberation for all. Baconi has shown me that revolutions begin in the self; I am forever changed after reading this book
Review quote:
In this moving and generous memoir, Tareq Baconi refuses to separate the story of sexual identity from the story of political commitment, and in so doing models a way to see our personal struggles as intertwined with our collective ones. Fire in Every Direction is a beautiful account of one man''s confrontation with the histories, silences, and desires - both communal and private - that have made him who he is.
Review quote:
In a time when it can feel like language has been stripped of meaning and words have lost all power, Fire in Every Direction arrives as an affirmation and a refusal of silence. Luminous, moving, and achingly beautiful, every page of this book is guided by Tareq Baconi''s fierce intelligence and a tenderness that this world does not deserve. You do not read this book to repair your heart, you read this book to understand the fissures
Review quote:
A powerful memoir of queer and Palestinian reckoning. Tareq