Nasser Al-Dhafiri and Nashwa Nasreldin

Nasser Al-Dhafiri, born in 1960 in the Kuwaiti city of Al Jahra, was a member of the Bedoon (stateless) community in Kuwait. At the time, the Bedoon were not permitted access to a university education, so, upon graduating from school in 1979, al-Dhafiri joined the Ministry of Defense as a soldier. In 1982, when the members of the Bedoon community were allowed to enroll in Kuwait University, he left his job, joined the civil engineering program, and published his first short stories in that same year. In addition to writing poetry, stories, and novels, al-Dhafiri worked in journalism. He published eight books, most of which feature the stateless community and their suffering. A number of these books were subsequently banned by Kuwaiti censors. In 2001, he immigrated to Canada, following the Kuwaiti government’s restrictions on the Bedoon during the 1990s. He completed his postgraduate studies there and acquired Canadian nationality. Al-Dhafiri died in Canada in 2019 after a battle with cancer and is buried in the city of Ottawa.

Nashwa Nasreldin is a writer, an editor, and a translator of Arabic literature. Her translations include the collaborative novel Shatila Stories and a co-translation of Samar Yazbek’s memoir, The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria. She is the managing editor of ArabLit.org, a website showcasing Arabic literary translation.