Among the Devastated Debris of an Residential Building, I Found a Volume I’d Translated

Within the rubble of a fallen apartment block, a particular vision lingered with me: a book I had translated from the English language to Persian, lying partially covered in dirt and soot. Its jacket was shredded and smudged, its sheets curled and singed, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

A City Amid Attack

Two days prior, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no alarms, just unexpected, forceful blasts. The web was entirely cut off. I was in my apartment, translating a text about what it means to move words across cultures, and the morals and concerns of occupying another’s narrative. As structures fell, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its understated way, for the endurance of significance.

Everything ceased. A project my publisher had been about to publish was halted when the facility ceased operations. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop thinking about the bookshelves in my apartment, holding dictionaries, rare volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Separation and Devastation

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the faraway, a industrial site was on fire, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to pursue them.

During those days, moods swept through the city like a storm: sudden terror, unease, indignation at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the personal impact, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate queries and sources that the work demands.

Outside, shockwaves ripped windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every pane was destroyed, the belongings lay ruined, household items scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an stand, refusing to let silence and debris have the final say.

Converting Sorrow

A picture circulated digitally of a 23-year-old artist who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an aged woman hurrying between passages, calling a name. People said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried remembrance. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning ruin into image, loss into poetry, grief into search.

The Craft as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, I found myself translating a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all desired – seemingly impossible, yet still worth pursuing.

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

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his prison cell, asking for more resources, insisting that linguistic work become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, rigor, foundation, and symbol” all at once.

A Scarred Voice

And then came the picture. I spotted it on a platform and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, scarred but whole, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, stripped of life among the concrete and ruins. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but persisting.

I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else disappears. It is a quiet, determined refusal to vanish.