Palestinian artist Jeffar Khaldi grew up amid the turmoil of the Lebanese civil war. To avoid coercion into one of the militias, he emigrated to Texas at the age of sixteen. In 1988 Khaldi enrolled at the University of North Texas, in Denton, where he studied interior architecture, receiving his degree in 1992. After eighteen years in the United States, Khaldi relocated to Dubai in the mid-1990s.