When their estranged Iraqi father passes away, three adult siblings embark on a poignant journey to Baghdad, discovering family secrets, confronting their fractured past, and forging unexpected connections that redefine the meaning of home.

SYNOPSIS:

Eli, an Arab-American man working in corporate operations, receives devastating news on the same day his boss delivers a poor performance review: his father, whom he hasn't seen in nearly a decade, has died in Baghdad. Despite his initial resistance, his sister Yasmine convinces him and their brother Sam to travel to Iraq to attend a gathering honoring their father's memory. What follows is an emotional journey of reckoning.

Arriving in Baghdad, the three siblings reconnect with their extended family, including Uncle Samir, who shares the painful family history they never knew. Through stories and conversations, Eli learns that their father's departure from America wasn't simply abandonment—it was the result of deep trauma stemming from the loss of his sister Nazima decades earlier during civil unrest. The trip forces each sibling to confront their own complicated feelings about a man who left them when they were young.

The journey culminates with a shocking discovery: their father had another family in Iraq—a grown son and daughter neither Eli, Sam, nor Yasmine knew existed. Eli's initial anger gives way to a broader understanding when his half-brother Yousef shares his own experience of their father—a charismatic but restless man who was never truly present, despite living in the same city.

Ultimately, visiting his father's grave, Eli finds closure. He realizes his father's inability to stay was never about his children's worth, but about their father's own inability to find contentment anywhere. Returning home to his wife Hannah and their three daughters, Eli has resolved the questions that haunted him since childhood, discovering that what he was seeking—his father's love as validation—he already found within his own family.

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