Khāmūshān Persiska (Farsi) 2025

“The Silent Ones,” written by Yousef Alikhani, is a collection of 32 short stories published in 2025 by Amoot Publishing. Most of the stories unfold in the village of Milak—the author’s birthplace in the Alamut region—where local culture, mythic elements, and a faint aura of the supernatural are woven deeply into the narrative atmosphere. As in his previous works, Alikhani turns his attention to characters who are no longer among the living, or whose presence persists only in quiet shadows. The stories are brief, yet each captures an isolated slice of life or an obscure, unspoken memory.

The central theme is the hidden presence of people who have fallen silent—either because they have died or because they have withdrawn from the flow of life for various reasons. This silence does not always equal death; it often takes the form of forgetting, distance, or voluntary isolation. The narratives revolve around people’s relationships with the past, with tradition, with nature, and with forces that cannot be seen. Local beliefs and oral tales subtly shape the stories, forming a distinct and cohesive world.

One notable feature of the collection is its use of the regional dialect and Alamut’s local vocabulary. Alikhani incorporates these linguistic textures without excessive explanation, allowing the language of the land to permeate the stories naturally. Women occupy central roles in many of the narratives—sometimes as narrators, sometimes as bearers of tradition, and at other times as figures trapped by cultural and social constraints. The author avoids overt commentary, yet the structure of the stories conveys powerful layers of solitude, loss, and the passage of time.

Stylistically, most of the pieces are brief and minimalist—often built from only a few paragraphs or scenes, and frequently lacking a conclusive ending. The narrative tone at times approaches poetry while remaining grounded in fiction. Recurring images—mist, wind, shadows, and unheard sounds—appear throughout the book, creating a unified yet varied atmosphere.