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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/
"Moudi Sbeity's book tells many stories at once—it is a story about Lebanon, a story about America, it is a story about feeling close to God and about feeling far from God. It is a story about the beginning of love and the ending of love and love's endlessness. It is a story about queerness and family and food and political struggle and desire. In other words, it's an epic, but one with the intimate feel of the daily details which tell the truth of a life lived with kaleidoscopic intensity, one lived with, most of all, love." —Kazim Ali
Moudi Sbeity's gorgeous debut memoir, Habibi Means Beloved, pulls you in from the very first page. Sbeity delicately constructs a vision of his life and world with such care and craft that you feel instantly immersed. His training as a poet makes so that every single paragraph—and indeed every sentence—absolutely sings. You cannot help but reread sentences for both their beauty and their astute commentary. He offers his stories with palms open wide and you will quickly understand that he is offering you a precious gift. —Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian, author of Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature
“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
“Moudi Sbeity tells the story of his struggle to belong with the candor of a truth-teller, the vision of a mystic, the eloquence of a poet, and the humility of a brother. On every page, he invites us into a revolution of the heart—one that reorients us toward others with radical acceptance and compassion. I’m all in.”
—Phyllis Cole-Dai, co-editor, Poetry of Presence anthologies of mindfulness poetry
“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
"Moudi Sbeity has written a memoir that meets pain with remarkable tenderness. Habibi Means Beloved is an exploration of exile, queerness, language, and the lifelong search for belonging, told in prose that is both lyrical and deeply generous. This is a book that reminds us that home is not always a place we inherit. It is something we build, within ourselves and with each other."
—Danny Ramadan, author of Crooked Teeth