Anwar F. Accawi was born in Lebanon to a family whose ancestors are believed to have gone to Jerusalem during the Crusades. He married a woman from Tennessee while living in Lebanon, where he taught English as a second language at the American University in Beruit. The two eventually returned to the states, when, after civil war broke out in Lebanon, he was forced to depart from the country. He and his wife moved to her native city of LaFollette, Tennessee, and Accawi began teaching as a full-time instructor at the English Language Institute at The University of Tennessee at Knoxville.