Among the Ruined Debris of an Apartment Block, I Found a Book I Had Translated

Within the wreckage of a collapsed structure, a particular image lingered with me: a book I had converted from the English language to Persian, sitting partly concealed in dust and ash. Its front was ripped and smudged, its sheets curled and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still communicating.

An Urban Center Under Assault

Two days before, rockets started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, forceful explosions. The web was completely cut off. I was in my residence, rendering a text about what it means to transport words across tongues, and the ethics and concerns of inhabiting someone else's perspective. As buildings collapsed, I sat revising a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything stopped. A book my publisher had been about to go to print was halted when the facility ceased operations. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, filled with reference books, hard-to-find volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That collection was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Grief

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer locations – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a photo: in the background, a industrial site was burning, dark smoke coiling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and threat seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings passed over the city like a front: sudden dread, anxiety, moral outrage at the injustice, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and materials that translation demands.

Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their sashes; at a relative's house, every window was shattered, the furniture lay damaged, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an stand, refusing to let silence and dust have the last word.

Transforming Sorrow

A image spread on social media of a 23-year-old artist who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an older woman running between alleys, calling a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: transforming devastation into image, demise into verse, mourning into search.

The Work as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by devastation, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet continued working until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his prison cell, asking for more resources, insisting that translation become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, hope, discipline, anchor, and symbol” all at once.

An Enduring Legacy

And then came the image. I saw it on a website and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, damaged but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been monochrome, stripped of life among the rubble and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but surviving.

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 full weight of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else falls away. It is a quiet, unyielding rejection to be silenced.