Omar is the author of A Fort of Nine Towers, an autobiography of his childhood in Afghanistan during the years of the civil war and the Taliban from 1992 to 2001.
He also worked for the UN, and served as a textiles specialist for USAID and the Asian Development Bank, helping carpet weavers across Afghanistan.
[8] Omar's first literary work, the essay A Talib in Love, was published in 2012 in the anthology That Mad Game: Growing up in a War Zone.
[11] An expanded version of this book entitled A Night in the Emperor's Garden: A True Story of Hope and Resilience in Afghanistan was published in October 2015.
In September 2018, Omar married Mai Wang, a naturalized US citizen who moved from Beijing to the United States as a child.