In early 2011, Bassem Youssef began filming clips in his laundry room to provide comic relief amid a crumbling political situation in his home country.
In America, Bassem's revolutionary impulses complicated friendships and romances.
In Egypt, Bassem Youssef, a doctor-cum-comedian, has bravely called for discussion rather than hostility.
When I arrived in June, Bassem had just been released from prison.
When Israeli forces occupied the West Bank in 1967, Bassem was 10 weeks old.
In 1993, Bassem told me, his cousin Said Tamimi killed a settler near Ramallah.
After one arrest in 1993, Bassem told me, an Israeli interrogator shook him with such force that he fell into a coma for eight days.
Ahed was next, then one by one, in silence, Bassem embraced family and friends, Palestinian activists from Ramallah and Jerusalem, Israeli leftists from Tel Aviv.
Last month in Cairo, Bassem Youssef, sometimes called the Egyptian Jon Stewart, was fined millions of dollars for satirizing that country's president and military leaders.
When he had greeted everyone, he walked to the cemetery and stopped in front of the still-unmarked grave of his brother-in-law Rushdie, who was shot by Israeli soldiers in November while Bassem was in prison.
