Tareq Baconi – the queer role in Palestinian advocacy

Welcome to another episode of DeepThink.

I'm your host, Anton Issa.

Tariq Bakouni is a renowned Palestinian-British author and scholar.

Tariq grew up in Amman, Jordan, but his story begins in Palestine.

His family were expelled in the 1948 Nakba and they fled to Lebanon, but they had to flee again in the 1970s when civil war broke out in Lebanon, this time relocating to Amman, Jordan, which is where Tariq's childhood begins.

Tarek recently wrote a memoir about his family's journey and his own and visited Melbourne where I had the privilege to speak to him at the Melbourne Writers Festival in front of a packed crowd at the Willis Centre.

It was a conversation that I had been looking forward to for months because Tarek and I have certain parallels.

Tariq is queer, as am I, and his story not only touched on the trauma inflicted upon his family as a result of the ethnic cleansing they experienced in Palestine, but also how identities compete within ourselves, his queer identity versus his cultural identity growing up in a hyper-patriarchal society in Jordan.

Tidek ended up relocating again to London in his adult life to explore himself to his full extent.

And his memoir captures all the nuances and complexities associated with that.

It's a story that I and I think many others can relate to.

I'd like to thank the Melbourne Writers Festival for giving me the chance to republish our talk.

And I hope you find it as fascinating as I did.

Here it is.