Tamanna Easar

Tamanna Easar is a writer from Afghanistan whose work explores themes of humanity, women’s struggles, exile, and the emotional weight of displacement. Her writing captures the resilience and silence of women living under Taliban repression, as well as the longing and alienation of those torn between homeland and exile. Her stories have been published across Afghanistan, Iran, and Europe in Persian. Her debut book—a memoir originally written in Farsi—is currently being translated into English and will soon be published in both languages. Tamanna is also a member of Paranda, a global network of women writers in Afghanistan and the diaspora supported by Untold Narratives and KfW Stiftung. Tamanna’s first short story in English ‘Tongueless Speaker’ will be published in Words Without Borders in July 2025. She is currently working on two cross-cultural collaborations: a creative letter exchange with a German writer, and a co-authored short story with a writer from Indonesia.

“Oh, door! You’re the only beautiful sight in this strange land; you alone give me a reason to look up and see not only with my eyes but with my mind’s eye. Perhaps you have no tongue but to me you speak most eloquently amid this deafening silence and strangeness. See, I’ve come again, I’ll come back. I’ll always come back. I promise you, one day I will meet you with a joyful heart and smiling lips. One day, when I’m not lost between everything and nothing. I make you this promise but I am afraid of this promise: how will I keep it? Is there a refugee whose heart is happy, whose lips are smiling—who isn’t absent?”