Housam 'Sam' Najjair was born and grew up in the suburbs of Dublin. His father came to Ireland from Tripoli as a student in the 1970s, where he met and married Sam's mother Joanna Golden, daughter of Geoffrey Golden and Maire O'Donnell, two famous Abbey Theatre actors.
From the age of nine, Sam lived with his family in Libya for three years, before returning to Ireland. By sixteen, he had moved out of home, having been expelled from school. He worked in restaurants and in the Liberty Market and, at nineteen, took over a small restaurant in Dublin city before returning to Tripoli for two years. There, he worked for a diamond jeweller and in a travel agency that specialised in desert and mountain trips. He returned to Dublin at the age of twenty-one and worked in construction for several years before his fateful decision to fight against Gaddafi and help in the liberation of Libya.