His African appearance often led people around him to assume he was a foreigner; he describes being asked frequently where he was from and why he spoke Urdu so well.
[1] He invited Indian poet Bashir Badr to recite poetry at Karachi University one time; Badr was delayed, and the students began to become restless; he responded to their complaints about their pre-lunch hunger with the comment to the effect that he would not have arranged for such an eminent poet to come if he had known that "the students of the Urdu Department had their brains in the stomach and not the head.
[citation needed] He quickly garnered recognition for the anger he expressed through his works, in which he often made reference to his experiences as a member of the African diaspora; his work attracted the attention of leading Urdu critic Shamsur Rahman Farooqi, who had them published in Indian literary journal Shabkhoon.
[2][3] He first took up residence in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens, New York City; he chose it because of its diversity, which helped him to feel less of a stranger as well as affording him the opportunity to study others' cultures.
[1][2] Danish cites Urdu poets such as Mustafa Zaidi, Obaidullah Aleem, Noon Meem Rashid, and Sirajuddin Zafar as his major influences.