Amid the Ruined Debris of an Apartment Block, I Found a Book I’d Translated

Among the wreckage of a fallen building, a particular image remained with me: a volume I had rendered from the English language to Persian, sitting partially covered in dirt and soot. Its front was shredded and dirtied, its leaves curled and singed, but it was still readable. Still communicating.

A Metropolis Under Assault

Two days before, rockets commenced attacking the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, forceful blasts. The internet was entirely disconnected. I was in my residence, working on a text about what it means to move words across tongues, and the morals and concerns of taking on a different voice. As structures fell, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its subtle way, for the lasting nature of purpose.

Everything halted. A book my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the printing house closed. Bookstores shut one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, holding lexicons, hard-to-find books I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That library was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Dispersal and Grief

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a photo: in the background, a industrial site was on fire, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like a storm: sudden fear, apprehension, righteous anger at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and sources that translation demands.

Outside, concussive forces tore windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every pane was broken, the possessions lay damaged, objects 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 last word.

Transforming Grief

A photograph was shared online of a 23-year-old artist who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between passages, yelling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried memory. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: transforming ruin into art, loss into verse, mourning into longing.

Translation as Resistance

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

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond an art form: it was an act of resistance, of holding one's ground, of holding on.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, rigor, foundation, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked Voice

And then came the picture. I saw it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, marked but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been black and white, devoid of life among the rubble and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but persisting.

I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else disappears. It is a quiet, unyielding rejection to disappear.