A collection of poems about sluthood, the immigrant identity, queerness and plants that make you see colors. It started off as a kickstarter campaign.

Praise

In the Name of Scandal was selected as part of Kickstarter’s “Projects we love” in 2020.

“In the Name of Scandal is an epic accomplishment that takes on important contemporary themes spanning immigration, language, lexicon and culture, roots and blocks, self-empowerment, the leftovers of colonialism and war, family, the legacy of a mother’s arms, the loss of a father, sex, sexuality, gender and gender fluidity, enlightenment, submission and dominance, dating and polyamory, wounds and walls, art and poetry, virtual reality, death, and love. The strength of the work is its scope, honesty and candor, especially in revelation or confession, its distinctive voice, and self-awareness, its philosophical insights and willingness to go deep into discovery and keep exploring its central questions.” - Hollie Hardy, Winner of the 2016 Poetry Center Book Award, author of How to Take a Bullet, And Other Survival Poems.

From the book

“You won’t be alone. You’ll be part of a nation of lighthouses. A continent of light” - Clotilde in In the Name of Scandal, 2020.

“ In this incarnation, she is called Bassem Feghali. Cross dressing, drag queening, high heeling his way to mainstream Arab television. In 1996. Calling it comedy. Teaching a generation of gender benders how to both wear and smuggle their identity in broad daylight” - Born in a metaphor in In the Name of Scandal, 2020.

“Maybe God is dominant because they’re unpredictable. Whip or sigh. Pain or elation. Hinge of a revolving door” - As the Will Bends in In the Name of Scandal, 2020.

Grab the kindle version here.

In the name of scandal

I grew up in a small country

A small city

With a small family

Surrounded by women

With personalities the size of a continent.

My grandmother is very loud

My grandmother is so loud

When we visited as kids

We would know she was home 

As we were parking 

A block away from where she lives.

And this loudest of women

Would only go quiet

Her voice almost concealed

When she spoke of things she did not approve of

“I was buying meat from Khalil and I saw Samiha

You know Samiha’s son...”

And there she would pause for effect

Lean forward as if delivering an oracle’s vision

“He likes boys”

And on and on

“I saw Jabbour and Bernadette at church

Their daughter”

And then a single word

Like a judge delivering a sentence

“Cocaine”

And on and on

“Farrah, 30 years old you know”

“No husband... But a lot of men”

She would bring her voice down just enough to be heard

If we went silent. And we did. So we knew.

There are boys who like boys

And people who take drugs

And others who would rather sleep around than get married

She spoke of these things

Like we do of the plagues and thunders that only hit the neighbor's house

And here is the result

Yours truly

Queer, psychonaut, polyamorous

I am my grandmother’s worst nightmare and favorite grandson 

All at the same time

My grandma still lights a candle for me every day 

And begs the lord to protect me

And I summon her voice and prayers 

At sex parties when I have performance anxiety

And in Ayahuasca ceremonies when the visions get rough

Najla -

Is the name of my grandmother -

Taught me love and scandal, all at the same time

She made a human and a trickster out of me

And to this day I kneel at the altar of Najla 

With both tears and laughter in my eyes

Laughter because by shielding us from the scandalous she made it all the more fascinating

I owe her my appetite for the strange and remote

My reverence for the scandalous

For that defiance that slowly defines you\

It starts with heels and bandanas

But then moves inwards

Suddenly the very feelings we found strange become interesting

Hate

Anger

Smallness

Judgement

Become objects of fascination

Drag queens of the inner world with purple lipstick and earrings that weigh 2 pounds

And then the drag queens become friends

And the admirer who was hiding in the audience 

Comes out

And becomes more himself

The word scandal

Comes from the Greek Skandalon which means stumbling block

Christian literature slowly turned that into “make someone stumble”

Or in other terms “make someone sin”

You see

We owe this world to a scandal

The original sin

And to a trickster

The serpent who got Adam and Even to bite into an apple

Tricksters are here to break the very things

We thought were set in stone

And that is what we are doing today

Ingesting and digesting the world

All in the name of scandal