Title: tàlâr
Author: Gil Avaei

„tàlâr“ presents a unique collection of short stories in from the caleidoscope of indigenous Iranian literature: this is literature about sorrow, pain and happiness of the people of my country, here in the gestalt of gileki* story. „tàlâr“ is the most excpetional of its genre in gileki: to reflect, remind and call their life into our consciousness. Beyond the many genuine elements of life and culture of these people, „tàlâr“ is also a unique linguistic richness of gileki words, terms, and proverbs, a language heritage which is partly forgotten and in danger of loss.

Although reading gileki appears to be difficult and cumbersom to many, the reason is not found in the language itself, rather in the immature experience of readers, who, as a consequence of the repression of indigenous languages in Iran, may have not had the opportunity to read and explore gileki in written. Far from chauvinism or any separatistic ideas, my poetry is dedicated to this one, in its own cluster unique, colour within our broad national spectrum of language and literature in Iran. I wish that readers will respect and understand this my point of view, when reading „tàlâr“.

* The internet encyclopedia Wikipedia cites “Gileki, the language of the people of Gilan (the South region to the Caspian Sea), is a mix of the continuation of the archaic Iranian languages of Indogerman roots with the indigenous languages of the inhabitants of this region before the migration of Arians to North Iran. Many elements of this language is similar to the archaic Iranian languages, for instance the conjugation of verbs and also the indicative seem to be similar to the Pahlevi and Parti languages.”