When Alex Hassan gets accepted to an Ivy League university, his middle-class Egyptian-American family is filled with pride and excitement. But that joy turns to shock when they discover that he has run off to the Middle East to join a holy war instead. When he refuses to communicate with everyone else, his loving grandfather Ali emails him one last plea. If Alex will stay in touch, he will share with Alex --- and only Alex --- a manuscript containing the secret story of his own life that he has kept hidden from his family, until now. It's the tale of his romantic and heartbreaking past rooted in Hollywood and the post-revolutionary Egypt of the 1950s --- which he is now forced to unearth to save his grandson, who is about to make the same tragic mistakes he made so long ago.
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