Born in Kanduz, northern Afghanistan, and brought up in Bajaur Agency, the tribal area bordering Afghanistan’s Kunar province, I came of age studying in a madrassah (religious seminary). Afterwards, I studied in several madrassahs across Pakistan (Dir, Swabi, Mardan, etc.)

Eventually, I left the madrassah in 1994 and started learning languages – as an autodidact. First, I learned Pashto with self-help study, then Urdu, then English, and now Dari. I lived in Lahore, Karachi, and Peshawar after leaving Bajaur Agency.

I had an interest in poetry and writing from a very early age. I loved writing poems, and read books and newspapers, secretly because they were allowed neither at our home nor the madrassah. In Lahore, I had the opportunity to study widely and improve my writing. I joined an Urdu newspaper in 1999 as my first attempt to work as a journalist but failed because my Urdu was not good enough and the newspaper also turned out to be a fraud. But I did not give up, and thus my second attempt turned out to be a success in 2002 when I joined a weekly newspaper, this also Urdu, in Karachi. By this time, I had improved my Urdu significantly. Meanwhile I wrote several articles in Pashto and Urdu and translated books that were published in known newspapers and magazines.

Some Pashto writings and a column in the weekly paper helped me to make my name in the literary circles. Thus I shifted to Peshawar and started working with daily Wahdat Pashto. Then with daily Khabroona, and then with Afghan Islamic Press (AIP), a Peshawar-based news agency as News Editor.

It was in 2008 that I started working with many US, UK, Canada, Singapore, India and Afghanistan based translation companies as a freelance translator. My English was improved to a good extent by then. Besides translating books, articles, softwares, technical manuals etc., I wrote articles in English and Pashto and worked with many websites.

In Feb. 2009 we shifted to Kabul and I started working with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Afghanistan project which was being implemented by Paiwastoon Networking Services Ltd.

In July 2009, I joined the Center for Conflict and Peace Studies (CAPS) as a Research Analyst.