Among the Bombed-Out Debris of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Volume I Had Rendered

In the wreckage of a fallen structure, a particular image stayed with me: a volume I had converted from the English language to Farsi, resting partially covered in dirt and soot. Its jacket was shredded and stained, its leaves curled and singed, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

A City During Assault

Two days earlier, missiles commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, powerful blasts. The digital network was completely severed. I was in my flat, rendering a text about what it means to transport language across cultures, and the morals and worries of taking on a different narrative. As structures collapsed, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its subtle way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything halted. A book my publisher had been about to go to print was halted when the printing house closed. Retailers closed one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop thinking about the bookshelves in my apartment, stocked with lexicons, rare volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Devastation

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the faraway, a industrial site was on fire, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to follow them.

During those days, moods moved through the city like a storm: swift fear, apprehension, righteous anger at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the attack eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and references that translation demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their sashes; at a relative's house, every sheet of glass was destroyed, the belongings lay ruined, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an stand, choosing not to let stillness and dirt have the final say.

Transforming Grief

A photograph was shared digitally of a young artist who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an aged woman hurrying between passages, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some deep-seated memory. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: turning devastation into picture, loss into poetry, sorrow into quest.

Translation as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, I found myself translating a fable about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet kept producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for.

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than an art form: it was an act of resistance, of staying put, of holding on.

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

An Enduring Legacy

And then came the image. I spotted it on a news site 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 colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, drained of life among the debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but surviving.

I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, 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 persist when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, determined refusal to vanish.