From 1979 to 1983,  he worked in arts and culture in television and radio in Afghanistan and in the mid-1980s left the country for Toronto where he now lives with his wife Maryam Mahboob, a novelist and short-story writer. His first short-story collection, Eid's Crescent from behind the Window, was published by the Afghan Writers Association in Kabul in 1988, and his second, The Butterflies Take Flight in the Winter, by Zarnegar Publications in Toronto in 2008.  His story "The Idol's Dust" was written shortly after the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, in March 2001.