.png)
Habibi Means Beloved
a queer memoir on war, stuttering, and belonging
Born into a Muslim family from a small Lebanese village, Moudi Sbeity came of age at the intersection of war, displacement, and difference. Queer, with a stutter, and often on the margins of belonging, Sbeity survived the conflicts that fractured their homeland and family before arriving in Utah as an eighteen-year-old evacuee.
​
From there, Sbeity transformed anonymity into advocacy as plaintiff in Kitchen v. Herbert, the landmark case that secured marriage equality across the 10th Circuit, and as founder of the celebrated Salt Lake City queer-friendly restaurant Laziz Kitchen. Yet behind these outward triumphs, Sbeity felt an inner call to return to their roots through writing and poetry. Habibi Means Beloved interweaves personal narrative, Sufi mysticism, and Lebanese heritage in a memoir of resilience, disconnection, and reconciliation. Both intimate and universal, it invites readers to reimagine belonging and recognize ourselves—and one another—as already beloved.
​
Published by the University of Utah Press, Sept 2026.
​
Pre-order here: https://uofupress.com/books/habibi-means-beloved/
“Habibi Means Beloved is an unflinching memoir by Moudi Sbeity. While challenging stereotypes about being Lebanese, queer, and queer Lebanese, the beating heart of Moudi's story is one of family, love and joy. This is a memoir that everyone needs to read.”
—Elias Jahshan, Editor, This Arab Is Queer & This Queer Arab Family
​
"Moudi Sbeity's Habibi Means Beloved is an astonishingly beautiful memoir, written by a poet . . . a poet who stutters, a poet evacuated from Beirut by Navy Seals, a poet whose queer identity disqualified him from his own life in Lebanon . . . and then in America. It reminds me that poets, like immigrants, are not categories for culture wars, but human beings marked by their experiences. I loved every word of this reflective and poignant window on a human life."
—Netanel Miles-Yépez, author of In The Teahouse of Experience
​
“In Habibi Means Beloved, Sbeity invites us to pursue the real task of living, which is to recognize our suffering as our most essential teacher and to love everything entirely. This book sings with old magic and supersensible wisdom.”
—Jonathan T. Bailey, author of The Sun Has Shifted as Have I.
​
“What is more political and transformative than the heart’s potential to turn its greatest suffering into poetry? asks Moudi Sbeity in his debut memoir Habibi Means Beloved. Part fire-sermon, part narrative prose, all deft heart-working magic, this book takes the reader on a journey from one war to another, from Lebanon aggressed by Israel to queer-loving men aggressed by the Utah government. Sbeity tempers silence and rejection with curiosity and tenacity in forging a life for himself, far from his family and home. This book proves a new divinity of voice willing to speak out, willing to sing out, despite the limitations of the State’s definition, dysfluency, and the limitations of other people’s minds. Sbeity dreams a new language of the heartscape that invites the reader, insisting, Abide with me, here, Habibi.”
— Rajiv Mohabir author of Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir