The American Quarter is set in an enclave of stairways in the Mediterranean port of Tripoli, on the northern coast of Lebanon. Unfolding at the height of the US-led invasion of Iraq, it revolves around the radicalization of an ordinary youth named Ismail. But Ismails story is part of a larger one that entails his father Bilal, a massacre survivor; his young disabled brother, whom Ismail looks after; his spirited mother Intisar, a maid like her mother before her in the wealthy, powerful Azzam household; and Abdelkarim, the Azzam familys only son, addicted to poetry and opera, and pining for his lost Polish ballerina--all depicted by Douaihy with irony and affection.