LEILA FADEL, HOST:
A grandmother flees Palestine as a child on a fisherman's boat. A family is uprooted from Lebanon after a massacre of refugees. A writer grows up with a culture of silence in Jordan. Tareq Baconi, a renowned Palestinian scholar, has written a memoir of three generations of displacement. It's called "Fire In Every Direction," and Tareq Baconi is with me now. Thank you for being here.
TAREQ BACONI: Thank you for having me.
FADEL: So in your book, you start with unpacking a yellow box full of letters from a childhood friend named Ramzi. Who was he to you?
BACONI: Well, Ramzi was the first boy that I fell in love with, and we were each other's - in some ways, I mean, it's funny to say that because we were neighbors but also pen pals because we used to write each other letters the whole time that we knew each other.
FADEL: Central to this book is growing up in Amman, Jordan, you really keep part of who you are and yourself a secret, almost even from yourself. And you start to fall in love with this boy, Ramzi. And you describe it as wearing a mask. What happens when you start to peek out from behind the mask and confess your feelings?
BACONI: Well, I mean, the mask was also something that protected me in the sense that I was afraid of what it would mean to acknowledge these feelings, and the mask would help me pretend that everything was as it should be. And that was sort of increasingly unsustainable until I teased the mask off a bit and tried to write to him about my feelings, and the reaction was swift and brutal, and that was the last time we spoke.
FADEL: Throughout the book, you use this Arabic word ayb - shame - you know, which I'm very familiar with too. Arab American woman growing up and you just like, oh, I - this is ayb. You can't do this. You can't be like this. And that was sort of the start of your mother's life with your father, right? Like, oh, you can't just be dating now that you're in Jordan. We don't do this. You have to get married. And I just wonder, like, that theme, how it shaped the narrative.
BACONI: Well, I mean, the notion of ayb - of shame - I think is very oppressive and it's very resilient wherever you are, whether you're growing up in an Arab family in the U.S. in the West or back home. I think the strictures of ayb are very confining. But I think that notion of shame I was really attracted to it or interested in it because I just - it's completely shaped my life - my experience as a queer boy growing up, my mom's experience as a political feminist who's working to organize and to be a committed activist. The same notions of ayb shape us.
FADEL: So in college in London in 2003, you're going through this political awakening, but you've also been going through this very personal awakening for yourself. And there's a point where you tell your mother, you know, I'm a gay man, and she listens and she hears you. And she says, OK, we got to tell your dad.
(LAUGHTER)
FADEL: And you go back and tell your dad. What was that conversation like?
BACONI: It was very difficult. I knew that that was the beginning of a journey for them and a continuation of one for me. And so I was prepared to not see him for a long time after that. I approached it with a lot of trepidation, and actually, my mom did as well because she put sedatives in his coffee to make sure.
(LAUGHTER)
FADEL: Just drug him a little for this one.
BACONI: (Laughter) Just drug him a little, which, you know, in hindsight, Arab mama in an Arab home, she knows what she's doing.
(LAUGHTER)
FADEL: Oh, man.
(LAUGHTER)
FADEL: When you tell your dad, he says - and you said damaging things, and I'm sure this was hurtful to hear. He says you cannot live in Jordan anymore, that this is no longer the place for you. When you go to Haifa and find your grandmother's childhood home that she was displaced from in 1948, you cannot bring yourself to ring the doorbell. It seemed like you were searching for home. Have you found that?
BACONI: Yes. I have. I have found that. My concept of home now is in my chosen family. And then home has come to mean something else to me. It's not this sense of needing to go back to somewhere. I think it's - my concept of it has evolved.
FADEL: It was very heartwarming to read near the end of the book where your dad just, like, loves your husband. He's like, when are you coming back to Beirut? It's just a totally - like, it - things changed, like, once you were open and clear to them about who you were and that you wouldn't back down from who that was.
BACONI: Absolutely. I think that he surprised me in so many ways. My dad has passed now but, you know...
FADEL: I'm so sorry.
BACONI: ...Before he passed away, I just couldn't believe where he got to and how he embraced me. And it really affirmed my impulse that, you know, these silences, who are they serving? My relationship with my father is much, much - or was much more loving and more honest than it ever was when I was hiding parts of myself from him.
FADEL: Yeah. Your first book is a very well-known book called "Hamas Contained" - a totally different book than the one I read. What was it like writing such a personal work that speaks to this larger question around displacement and loss and war and belonging?
BACONI: It was challenging in ways that I hadn't necessarily anticipated. You know, writing analytically or writing academically is important, but it's also a way of hiding - at least it was for me.
FADEL: Yeah.
BACONI: And this book was a way of going into the lived experience. What does it mean that I'm the grandson of four refugees from Palestine, now having to witness a Nakba and being - or a genocide, the continuation of the Nakba - and being unable to stop it. And in that way, I found it painful but also cathartic and important for me on a personal level. You know, the funny thing is, I'm a very private person and I - you know, I would've never imagined writing a memoir. But actually, writing this book was the only way I could really confront myself and sit with myself and sort of embrace who I'd become as a person in all of its different facets.
FADEL: Is it freeing to have it in the world?
BACONI: Well, we'll find out. It's...
(LAUGHTER)
BACONI: You know, I keep saying this is either the bravest or the stupidest thing I've done, and we'll find out soon enough.
FADEL: Tareq Baconi is the author of "Fire In Every Direction." Thank you, Tareq.
BACONI: Thank you for having me.
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