This is how the book begins, as so many sagas in the Middle East do: Panic on the way to the airport. Praying your name doesn’t show up on a no-fly list. Dr. Bassem Youssef writes: “Destination: Dubai. Destiny: Unknown.” His crime? Making people laugh.

Years before his 2014 escape from Egypt, Youssef, a cardiologist, was in the business of healing hearts. But the Arab Spring shifted the soil beneath him. He was a newlywed in 2011, with piercing blue eyes and a sharp wit. And like everyone else, he was at his wit’s end. He spent his nights operating on wounded protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, but he didn’t feel like he was doing enough. So a few months later, he did what everyone with an internet connection and an obsession with Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show did back then: He started his own YouTube channel. He soon found that he could mend hearts in a different way.

REVOLUTION FOR DUMMIES by Bassem Youssef HarperCollins, 304 pp., $26.99

Political satire was rare in the Arab world at that time, so his show was revolutionary from the moment it first aired. Egyptians have a history of inserting political comedy into films and plays, but its autocratic leaders were usually not the direct butt of these jokes. In the spirit of The Daily Show, Youssef kept it simple and named it Al-Bernameg, or The Show. In these early clips, he mocked authority figures in the country, including the longtime strongman Hosni Mubarak, airing his country’s dirty laundry from his home’s actual laundry room.

Eventually, he had to assemble a team to help with the writing, so he scanned Facebook and Twitter and hired people who left funny comments on relevant posts. Nobody knew what they were doing, but they were doing something. The low-budget production quickly attracted five million viewers an episode, and, soon after, landed him a lucrative TV deal.

But while his dreams were starting to come true, so were his nightmares. Youssef’s rise and fall almost directly mirrors the wild swings in Egypt’s recent history. Not everyone was happy about the way he joked about serious matters. He jabbed at Hosni Mubarak, and when Mubarak fell he jabbed at his democratically elected successor, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. He saved his best material for Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the military leader who took office in 2014 as the counter-revolution swept away Morsi and all the gains that Egypt’s people power movement had made. The Sisi people were really unhappy with Youssef. After intense pressure, lawsuits, arrests, and stalled production, the show was canceled. Youssef’s father was mysteriously killed in a car accident. Youssef left the country before he could get arrested again.