Among those Devastated Remains of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Volume I’d Translated

In the wreckage of a fallen structure, a solitary vision stayed with me: a tome I had rendered from the English language to Persian, sitting partly concealed in dust and soot. Its jacket was ripped and dirtied, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still legible. Still uttering words.

A City Under Attack

Two days earlier, rockets started hitting the city. There were no alarms, just unexpected, violent explosions. The internet was completely disconnected. I was in my residence, translating a work about what it means to transport words across tongues, and the principles and concerns of taking on someone else's narrative. As structures fell, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything ceased. A manuscript my publisher had been about to publish was stuck when the facility shut down. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, filled with lexicons, valuable editions I had spent years gathering 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.

Dispersal and Grief

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – 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 image: in the distance, a plant was ablaze, thick smoke coiling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods swept through the city like a storm: sudden fear, apprehension, indignation at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and sources that the work demands.

Outside, concussive forces tore windows from their casings; at a cousin's house, every pane was destroyed, the belongings lay broken, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, painting at an stand, choosing not to let quiet and dust have the last word.

Converting Pain

A photograph was shared on social media of a 23-year-old writer who was lost 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 dashing between alleys, yelling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning destruction into art, loss into verse, mourning into search.

Translation as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, 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 experienced the loss of his sight yet kept working until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more books, insisting that linguistic work become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, goal, discipline, anchor, and metaphor” all at once.

An Enduring Legacy

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a website and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, marked but whole, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been black and white, stripped of life among the debris and ruins. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but enduring.

I stared at 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 fire, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a quiet, stubborn rejection to be silenced.