Within the Devastated Debris of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Volume I Had Translated

Within the wreckage of a destroyed structure, a solitary image stayed with me: a book I had converted from English to Persian, sitting partly concealed in dust and soot. Its front was shredded and smudged, its leaves curled and scorched, but it was still readable. Still speaking.

An Urban Center Under Bombardment

Two days before, missiles commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, forceful explosions. The digital network was entirely cut off. I was in my residence, rendering a book about what it means to carry language across cultures, and the morals and concerns of inhabiting someone else's narrative. As structures fell, I sat editing a text that argued, in its subtle way, for the lasting nature of purpose.

Everything ceased. A book my publisher had been about to go to print was halted when the printer closed. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the booms were too close, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop thinking about the shelves in my apartment, filled with reference books, rare volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Dispersal and Devastation

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a image: in the distance, a factory was ablaze, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and peril seemed to pursue them.

During those days, feelings moved through the city like weather: sudden fear, unease, righteous anger at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the attack destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and sources that the work demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every sheet of glass was broken, the possessions lay broken, household items scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an easel, choosing not to let quiet and debris have the ultimate victory.

Converting Sorrow

A picture spread digitally of a 23-year-old poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an elderly woman dashing between alleyways, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning devastation into picture, loss into verse, sorrow into search.

The Craft as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of destruction, I found myself rendering a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all yearned for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of defiance, of remaining, of enduring.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his confinement, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that linguistic work become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, practice, foundation, and metaphor” all at once.

A Scarred Work

And then came the photograph. I spotted it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but whole, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained of life among the debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but persisting.

I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a act with consequences”, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a persistent, stubborn rejection to vanish.