Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Qussay Al-Attabi grew up in a city under the suffocating control of Saddam Hussein and the Ba’th Party. His father, a linguistics professor who’s studied in the United Kingdom, passed on a love for English literature to Qussay, and he earned a bachelor’s degree in English language and literature from Al-Mustansiriya University. When U.S. forces invaded Baghdad in 2003 and deposed the Saddam Hussein regime, Qussay joined forces with the soldiers and served as an interpreter at a local police station. While studying for a master’s degree and serving as a part-time English instructor in 2005, Qussay was selected to be part of a delegation of six Iraqi students to visit the United States. On that trip, he visited Harvard University and Roger Williams University and emerged as the natural spokesperson for the group.

Upon his return to Iraq after the two-week trip, Qussay found that conditions had deteriorated. Qussay resumed work as an interpreter, patrolling the turbulent Sadr City with teams of U.S. soldiers, firefights a regular part of the mission. After the battalion’s exit from Iraq, Qussay took a post as a university lecturer but was quickly targeted by the Mahdi militia as an American aide. A death threat greeted him at his office one day—less than 48 hours later, Qussay was on a plane to Amman, Jordan. There, he reached out to friends he’d made at Roger Williams University, and after nine months of delays in Amman, Qussay was finally granted entry into the United States on a student visa. Today, the 26-year-old is a graduate student in comparative literature at Brown University.