Amid the Devastated Remains of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Book I Had Translated

Among the rubble of a collapsed apartment block, a particular vision stayed with me: a book I had converted from the English language to Farsi, sitting partly concealed in dust and soot. Its front was shredded and stained, its pages bent and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still communicating.

A Metropolis Amid Bombardment

Two days earlier, rockets began striking the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, forceful explosions. The web was completely disconnected. I was in my apartment, translating a work about what it means to move words across tongues, and the ethics and anxieties of taking on a different perspective. As edifices collapsed, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the persistence of meaning.

Everything halted. A book my publishing house had been about to send to press was stuck when the printer shut down. Bookstores shut one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, stocked with reference books, rare books 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.

Separation and Loss

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure towns – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a image: in the background, a factory was burning, thick smoke curling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and threat seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like weather: sudden dread, anxiety, indignation at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and references that translation demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their sashes; at a cousin's house, every window was broken, the belongings lay broken, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an easel, choosing not to let quiet and dust have the last word.

Converting Sorrow

A image spread on social media of a young poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went viral next to her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an older woman hurrying between passages, calling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: changing destruction into art, demise into poetry, mourning into quest.

The Craft as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet kept working until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all yearned for – seemingly impossible, 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 holding one's ground, of holding on.

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

An Enduring 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 works, damaged but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, stripped of life among the debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, 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 act with consequences”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, unyielding rejection to be silenced.