Hey, it's Empir's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Tarek Bacconi's memoir,

Fire in Every Direction, is an open, personal, vulnerable memoir about growing up as a queer boy in

Jordan, hiding his sexuality from his family, the shame he felt, and finally coming out.

But before this book, Bacconi was known for his scholarship

writing academically about Hamas and Palestinian politics. And he tells Amper's Lila Fadl about

how that type of academic writing was for him its own form of hiding. That's coming up.

This message comes from Wise,

the app for using money around the globe.

When you manage your money with Wise,

you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Join millions of customers and visit Wise.com.

Tees and Cs apply.

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.

Tarek Bikoni, a renowned Palestinian scholar, has written a memoir of three generations of displacement. It's called

Fire in Every Direction. And Tark Bikoni is with me now. Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me.

So in your book, you start with unpacking a yellow box full of letters from a childhood friend

named Remsey. Who was he to you?

Well, Remsey was in some ways my closest friend growing up.

He was my neighbor.

...