Tareq Baconi: Fire In Every Direction. A Memoir

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 best friend, Ramzi. 

After relocating to London for college, Tareq hopes to put aside his past and begin to work through an understanding of self as a queer man. Yet as the Iraq War radicalises 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. Eventually, tracing the journey of his family before him, Tareq returns to Palestine.