mother. She moved to the United States with her family in 1986.

Alshaibi's mother, Maha Yaqoubi was born in Jaffa in 1946. The Yaqoubi family were relocated to Iraq around 1949, as a result of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. The family settled in Baghdad and where the artist's mother married Alshaibi's Iraqi father, Hameed, in 1968. Sama Alshaibi and her siblings, including Usama Alshaibi, and parents fled Basra, Iraq in 1981,