Amid those Devastated Remains of an Residential Building, I Found a Book I Had Translated

Within the rubble of a destroyed apartment block, a solitary image lingered with me: a volume I had translated from English to Farsi, resting half-buried in dirt and ash. Its front was torn and smudged, its sheets curled and singed, but it was still legible. Still uttering words.

A City Under Assault

Two days earlier, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, forceful explosions. The web was totally severed. I was in my residence, rendering a text about what it means to transport text across tongues, and the principles and worries of taking on another’s perspective. As edifices fell, I sat editing a text that contended, in its subtle way, for the endurance of significance.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to send to press was halted when the printing house closed. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, holding reference books, valuable editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That library was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Distance and Loss

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure towns – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a image: in the faraway, a factory was on fire, black smoke coiling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings passed over the city like a front: sudden fear, anxiety, righteous anger at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant queries and sources that translation demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their casings; at a family member's house, every pane was destroyed, the possessions lay ruined, household items scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an stand, choosing not to let stillness and dust have the final say.

Transforming Grief

A image spread digitally of a young writer who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral alongside her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an older woman hurrying between alleys, shouting a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated memory. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: changing devastation into picture, death into verse, mourning into quest.

Translation as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst ruin, I found myself working on 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 unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than literary craft: it was an act of perseverance, of staying put, of holding on.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a prison; 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 “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, discipline, anchor, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked Legacy

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 renditions, marked but intact, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, drained of life among the debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – 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 complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice had significance”. 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, unyielding rejection to be silenced.