Author Talk: Fire in Every Direction

Author Tareq Baconi in conversation on his recent memoir, Fire in Every Direction. From the renowned Palestinian scholar, the work is a memoir of political and queer awakening, of impossible love amidst generations of displacement, and what it means to return home. Books will be for sale at the event, and available for signing. 

Both a 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 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, 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. 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. Eventually, tracing the journey of his family before him, Tareq returns to Palestine.

This is an account of finding oneself through histories of dispossession and reclaiming what has been silenced.

About the Author

Tareq Baconi is a Palestinian writer, scholar, and activist. He is the grandson of refugees from Jerusalem and Haifa and grew up between Amman and Beirut. His work has appeared in, among others, The New York Times and The Baffler, and he contributes essays to The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He has also written for film; his award-winning BFI short One Like Him, a queer love story set in Jordan, screened in over thirty festivals. He is the author of Hamas Contained: A History of Palestinian Resistance, which was shortlisted for the Palestine Book Award, and Fire in Every Direction.

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Located at 26 Wooster Street, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art strives to provide a welcoming environment to all visitors. Five external steps lead to our entrance doors: a wheelchair lift is available. All galleries are wheelchair-accessible, and a single-occupancy accessible restroom is located behind the visitor services desk: all restrooms are gender-neutral. Large print didactics are available. For questions or access requests, please email [email protected] with 1 week advance of your visit.

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