I first encountered Adrian Mouhajer in 2022 at the Bankstown Poetry’s G.O.A.T. slam, hosted at Street University in Liverpool. In the exhilarating boxing-style rounds of poetry, Adrian refused to diss. Instead, they retaliated against their opponent with an ode to friendship. This is the type of poet (and person) that Adrian is: ‘defiantly soft.’
A queer, non-binary Lebanese-Australian writer, performer, and editor from Western Sydney, Adrian has performed for Bankstown Poetry Slam, Queerstories, Eulogy for the Dyke Bar and Cement Fondu. They recently published their short story, ‘’Driving a Mercedes but Living in a Rental’ in Povo (Sweatshop 2024).
I had the privilege to interview Adrian on Gadigal Country prior to the festival. They spoke about writing with vulnerability and agency at the intersection of family, queerness, class, race, and religion. I am grateful for their company, and left this conversation fuelled by their radical optimism.
Date- 23rd May 2024
Location- Carriageworks
Adrian, thank you so much for speaking to me! Let’s start with who your favourite author is right now.
That's a really good question. I have so many. If we're talking about Australian authors, then I'm really vibing with Sarah El Sayed, Muddy People. I'm really loving those family stories a lot more these days, so I really like her.
But there's another author that I've been really obsessed with who isn't Australian but is American. The author is Lamya H. and they wrote Hijab Butch Blues. I've been really loving that book because it’s all about being a hijabi butch, a non-binary person, and the way they've approached their life is really beautiful. They share their perspective on the stories in the Qur'an and they show how they've unpacked it with their friends and talked about it. You can tell that they have a lot of love for their religion and in finding the ways that their religion can fit into their lives quite easily. They have a very beautiful way of showcasing how Islam, at its core, its principles, really align with a lot of social justice principles. So I've been really loving reading the book because it's just made me feel really seen, but also very inspired. There’s a new wave of queer Muslim authorship that's going deeper into the nuance of what it means to be a queer Muslim and what means beyond, just ‘we exist and we're valid.’
I really appreciated that because I know all those stories—I grew up with those stories. But I'd never heard them used in such a way. For example, one of the stories that I really liked from the book explored the relationship between the Prophet Yūsuf and his brothers in the Qur'an; there's a betrayal between him and his brothers and then he finds them later on in life, but he doesn't punish them. There’s a period where he needs to keep himself safe in case they're gonna do it again. I thought that that was really interesting: that negotiation of boundaries within the biological family. We can have a lot of patience with them, a lot of grace. We also need to make sure that we're keeping ourselves safe as well, opening our hearts for forgiveness but keeping them accountable.
It’s so special that you and your friends can identify so closely with these books. Thank you for those recommendations. Congratulations for getting your story published in Povo. I was reading “Driving a Mercedes but living in a rental” (great title!) and it shows a lot of awareness about race, sexuality, queerness and interestingly locales—how things differ from, say, Lakemba to the Shire. What does that story mean to you as someone who said they have ‘multiple identities?’
We occupy multiple spaces and we reflect a lot on how we're accessing those spaces. Every time I write a story I'm not thinking, ‘how can I cram all my identities into it?’ To be honest, I think the opposite. I try really hard not to make it all about my ‘identities.’ I try to make it about me and then, through doing that organically and honestly, it just comes through because my experiences are informed by my identities and the spaces that I occupy.
I can write that story in a queer lens because I've lived a queer life. I can write that story from a class lens because I know what it feels like to be working class. Class isn't above people who are above me or people who are below me like we're in some kind of competition. What I really wanted to do was showcase how something that is not thought about by someone else can be someone's whole life. There's no way for me to walk into a house and not consider it. Every time someone tells me, ‘this is the house that we own,’ not rent, I'm immediately like ‘oh, wow, that's amazing, oh shit, could not relate!’
In this story, I'm really interested in all the unsaid things in our relationships. You don't actually have to be quite explicit with an intention to say, ‘Okay, I'm going to write about identity. I'm going to write about being a poor person. I'm going to write about being from Lakemba.’ I don't think like that. I want to tell a story where I was super aware of the person…
From the ground up?
From the ground up yeah. Then I want to see what people can take from that. So that story meant for me, it was really refreshing to write something that was about queerness but also about class for a change.
I find it really productive that you're saying that you're happy acknowledging differences, but you don't you don't villainize others for those differences. So you're with Sweatshop and on their website, they define themselves as ‘a literacy movement that's based in Western Sydney and they're devoted to culturally empowering people.’ You come from Lakemba. I come from Bankstown. How do you and your fellow authors at Sweatshop use the craft to define, or maybe even redefine in some spaces, what it means to be Australian?
I think it's a really good question. With Sweatshop, their whole mantra is a really good bell hooks quote about how people are only as powerful as the literacy that they have: “"We cannot talk about freedom and justice in any culture unless we are talking about mass-based literacy movements." Who gets to tell our stories? For a long time it has been the loudest voices who are telling those stories of what it means to be Australian, and I don't necessarily think that those loudest voices have always been representative of people like us. Especially from Western Sydney. Especially from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Those voices still speak about us, but how we're depicted in their stories versus how we would depict ourselves is a big question and something that I think a lot of people have been dissatisfied with. When you pick up a book and you see a character like you and it's not representative of what your experience is, I think there's a natural urge in you to be like, ‘I want to demand better.’ The coolest thing about Sweatshop is it's a collective of people who saw that and were like ‘well, I'll write something better.’ Kind of like when you pick up Twilight and you're like ‘fuck man, I could write something better than this.’ So that's what I think it is in terms of redefining what it means to be Australian.
Sweatshop is all about empowering people who have always been here and will always be here to tell their own stories and to tell them in their own authentic voice. Just giving them the tools to do so or allowing them to develop into themselves like that.
I really like your point that culturally diverse people have always been here, but they haven't seen themselves as writers because of the media that's being reflected back at them. That's why I admire the work you're doing at Sweatshop.
Yeah, when I applied for the Sydney Opera House mentorship, it asks you to list what awards you've received. This was three, four years ago. I was like, ‘I haven't received any awards for my writing because I work so I can't really write all the time. I do have some merit awards from school, and I used to be told that my creative writing was really good!’ It was a class comment, but it didn't mean it to be a class comment. I work all the time, so unfortunately I haven't always had the time to devote myself to writing.
Then Winnie (Dunn) told me, ‘you're one of my favourite applications because you were straight up honest about that bit,’ and this mentorship was targeting emerging writers. I think that's what an emerging writer is. It's a person who's never really given themselves permission to be a writer, because they don't think that they're worthy enough. That's why I'm always pushing people. Even if you don't see yourself as a writer, apply for this. Don't have that whole perfectionist mindset.
I like that. I agree that authenticity and honesty should be at the core of every choice you make when you move around this writing space. You embody the way writing, and subsequently the conversations we have wherein we ‘overshare,’ can be medicine to the increasing apathy we’re seeing unfold in parts of the world right now. What does vulnerability look like in terms of your craft?
Vulnerability has always been like a really important part of my writing. Like you said, we live in a world that's so apathetic that people are able to just stream past videos of horrific shit happening in Gaza and just pretend like it's none of their business. I think my rebellion to the world is my vulnerability. And if it makes people uncomfortable, good.
The vulnerability of human relationships is something I'm so fascinated by. The way that it reflects in my craft is that I'm not afraid to shy away from touchy subjects. So I write about my family a lot and I write about the dirtiness of my family a lot. Hence why I think it's a harder picture for people to accept that my mother is not accepting of my sexuality, but she still loves me and I still love her. I think that's a pretty vulnerable thing to say, that I still love my mother, despite her not accepting me.
Even in the Povo piece, my girlfriend and I are having this conversation about class and again, it could be very easy to just subscribe to fucking cancel culture, and be like, ‘don't know enough about this,’ or ‘how can you be like a social justice person and not know this?’ No. What I did was I showcased a real conversation I've had with her and a real, human reaction to something that is disarming. I think, to be honest, that story makes my girlfriend look really good, in the sense she's a person who's not afraid to change her mind. I think that's again a vulnerable thing to showcase, because we're taught that it's actually a good thing if you don't ever change your mind.
I find that the vulnerability that manifests in your work is very defiant, which I find very powerful. You say you portray situations that aren't necessarily pretty, on both sides. You refuse to mould yourself to, say, narratives of antagonist/protagonist. But I also like how you find humour. Is humour itself a form of vulnerability?
Definitely. I also think humour is a coping mechanism. For so many of us, especially children of migrants, we use humour as a bit of a deflection. We all make fun of the trauma, but there is trauma, you know? So there's always one funny bit, but then it's about bringing it back to the serious. I wouldn't ever be able to take the piss out of everything, because then I wouldn't be able to feel like I'm genuinely showing the complex human relationships we have. Humour does heal a little bit of it. But I worry about the way that humour sometimes doesn’t assess.
One time my dad told me, ‘The problem with you is if you're too soft, the world will eat you up, and if you're too hard, the world will break you.’ So you have to be somewhere in between, and that's what I think that I want to do with my writing, which is why I think I'm so defiantly soft. In a world where it's ‘cringe’ to be this or that, or you can't be happy, you've got to be cool and mysterious—I want to be the opposite of that.
Exactly, optimism of a certain form is productive because it forces you to envision possibility. You could hate on something, but then it’s like, ‘what now?’
Yeah, I actually think it takes more work to be optimistic. To be honest, it's really difficult. Obviously there's toxic positivity to consider but like I said, it's a balance. We don't have to pretend the world isn't crap, but we also don't have to pretend like we are all crap as well. There's so much possibility in humans. We should all believe in each other a little bit more.
I noticed that a lot, not only in the story you just published, but also your poems at Bankstown Poetry Slam, because a lot of them are love poems. I admire how in ‘Under the olive trees’ you ended, ‘even if my mother doesn't look your way, you're still adored.’ And even in ‘The new romantics’ you ended with ‘you could call me a romantic, but a better descriptor would be to call me yours.’ I think there's something very radical about that optimism.
I’m very gay like that. Love is radical. Free love. It’s such a transformative thing that we don't focus on enough.
If I was to ask you then, ‘who do you write for?’ would the answer be the people in your immediate circles?
No, no. I write for me. I'm selfish! I think every writer writes a little bit for themselves, you know? I think it's dishonest to say that everything I write is for other people and none of it is for me. Of course I write for me. I write for me in a therapeutic sense. I write for me in a way to connect with people. And when someone comes up to me and says, ‘that poem really resonated with me,’ I feel less alone. I feel like someone understood my experience.
But I also write for the people who can't write. I write for my parents. I love my mom and I love my dad and I think they've got so many good fucking sayings and idioms in their heads but they're probably not going to publish a book one day. But that's okay, I'll publish a book that's got them in it. It's my way to give back. It's the only thing that I know how to do sometimes. So, I write for me and I write for the people I love and I write for the public.
That's why I publish. If I only write for the people I love, I would just gift my girlfriend love poems. The best piece of advice I ever got from Winnie once was I wrote a poem and she was like ‘look, Adrian, no offence, but that poem sounds like a poem more for your girlfriend than a poem for publishing. What's your original contribution of knowledge?’ And I was like ‘fuck, yeah, shoot. I never thought about that before. Maybe some of this poetry is private. Not because it's sexual or anything like, just because it's sentimental. It’s not going to have the best impact as well. Kind of the way you have inside jokes.
So the Povo piece is out in the public. When you live in different areas and you grow up in different incomes, there's a different experience. Yeah we’re Lebs, but not one person can speak for another person which is, I think, a big thing that people don't really understand, especially in corporate. Like, ‘oh, we've got our one Arab, we've got our one Asian.’ There is no one universal PoC experience, even if you're from the same race.
Why have you chosen to read ‘Romance in Ramadan’ tonight?
I wanted that out in the open because, I'm sick of these like narratives of, ‘they don't accept you 100%. That's their problem and you have no part to play in this.’ We're not being fair in the sense that we're not taking accountability for what we're doing as well. What are we exposing ourselves to? Where are the boundaries for us? You know like your mom is just being her mom at some points. But if you're living there with her 24/7, there's some things that you can do to put some distance between you so you stop hurting her and she stops hurting you.
Seeing it from her perspective, my mom's not a bad person. She really loves me. But I think she's just really attached to some parts of her identity that make it very hard to accept the queer part of me. She loves the other part of me and she's not actively hurting me in a way where she's not kicking me out of the house or anything like that. So it was more up to me to adjust what I wanted from her because I was being influenced by, ‘if they don't do this X, y and Z, they don't love you.’ There's still love there. It's just different. As adults, you know, especially because I'm turning 30 now. I'm not like a 16-year-old anymore. At a certain point I have to take accountability for myself. That's again some more commentary I wanted to put in the poem.
It's like you're redefining what optimism means beyond naivety.
Yeah! I want to redefine hope. I think I used to get hope from people who said, ‘your parents will eventually come around.’ That's the most common hope. When it comes to queerness in general, not just queer Muslims it's always ‘it's okay, if your parents aren't accepting straight away, they'll get better eventually.’ I feel like that's toxic positivity. But what happened for you might not happen for everybody else. It's a generalisation, and it's also not taking into account that all our relationships look a bit different. Maybe your parents came around. Maybe my parents never do, but that doesn't mean your life is better than mine, doesn't mean my life is better than yours.
The hope that I want to put with my piece is even in a sad situation, there are things that we can do to make it easier for ourselves and to make ourselves happy and also to have love. There's other ways we can sustain ourselves so that we're able to still be in the lives of other people. But if we never take accountability for our own behaviour, if we constantly think of ourselves as powerless we will always be powerless.
When I asked you who you write for, you said you were selfish. But when I read and listen and watch your work, I see community and communion coming through in the form of family and romantic love. You're reminding us that writing should not be a solitary feat. In that vein, is there a particular figure in your life who has significantly shaped your writing career?
I've met so many amazing mentors over my life. The writers that I work alongside in Sweatshop all inspire me in different ways. I refer constantly to Winnie Dunn and Sarah Saleh. I love the BPS slam-mily. If there's any group of writers that have inspired me and dramatically changed the way that I approach my writing, it's those two groups.
The Bankstown Poetry Slam honed me into the confident person I am today. When I was getting up there and doing my first poem, I was like ‘what the fuck am I doing? I'm just going to go up there and basically make it out like I was a bitch with an ex who really fucked me up. That's so pathetic.’ But the Bankstown Poetry Slam really redefined what vulnerability meant for me. They turned it from this cringey, pathetic thing—we're thinking Tumblr 2012 definitions of vulnerability—and then made it this really beautiful, healing thing. When Bilal says, ‘I can't keep this place safe without all the work of you guys,’ he's a huge inspiration to me.
Sarah Saleh is constantly giving back to the community; she's organising poetry retreats, and she's always there. She's not the kind of person who forgets you. She's a really lovely person and I meet so many people who are like her and Bilal.
The biggest thing that I take away from all my mentors is that writing is a communal thing. We're not just writing for ourselves as much as I'm like making a joke and being like ‘yeah, we're selfish.’ We have a responsibility to be honest to ourselves and to be respectful and honest with our communities as well. There's a way to still incorporate critique of those communities but you can do that critique with love. You can show the full picture; don't just show half the picture because it makes you look good. Even if I look bad in my writing, at least I was honest.
It makes it worth it even when I'm talking to someone like you. It makes me happy that you noticed and connected with my work.
Thank you so much for this interview. People like you give me so much hope for the world when my hope dwindles in times like these.
Trust me, same. But I think we sustain each other: you give me hope and I give you hope. So thank you, I really appreciate it.
After our interview, I watched Adrian’s powerful and poignant delivery of ‘Romance in Ramadan’ at the Sweatshop Stories event. In a crowded hall in Carriageworks, I closed my eyes along with the audience and felt the pull of their pensive pauses. In the collective silence, the audience clung to Adrian’s aching images of the dinner-table, to the ‘meat off fingertips’, ‘a date already half-gnawed,’ their father’s ‘long lashes closed as he waits to pray’ at the dinner-table. These images were left to ache in memory at the story's end: ‘for there are some meals I cannot share with my mother.’
Read more of Adrian’s work at Sweatshop and StoryCasters.
