Alif the Unseen

The Alf Yeom represents the differences between seen and unseen. In Chapter 0, Reza views the book as the key to jinn magic and believes reading it will bestow mythical abilities upon him. When Alif receives the book in Chapter 3, he begins his journey to the unseen world, something he could not have done without the book. Sakina describes the Alf Yeom as a mindset that humans cannot and were not meant to understand. She adds that Alif’s generation interacts differently with information due to the internet, which is similar to the unseen world. Even so, the Alf Yeom is too different from technology for humans to make sense of its stories.

When Alif translates the Alf Yeom’s metaphors into code, he destroys Sheikh Bilal’s computer because magic and technology were not meant to be combined. The Hand’s similar failure in subsequent chapters supports this idea. When the Hand tries to code the Alf Yeom, he breaks the internet, and rebellion ensues. Again and again, the Alf Yeom stands as a barrier between the seen and unseen worlds and, thus, between magic and technology.