Within those Ruined Remains of an Residential Building, I Found a Volume I Had Translated

In the rubble of a fallen apartment block, a single image stayed with me: a book I had rendered from the English language to Farsi, sitting partly concealed in dust and ash. Its front was ripped and smudged, its sheets bent and singed, but it was still legible. Still communicating.

A Metropolis During Assault

Two days before, missiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, powerful detonations. The internet was totally cut off. I was in my flat, rendering a book about what it means to transport language across tongues, and the morals and concerns of taking on someone else's voice. As buildings came down, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the persistence of meaning.

Everything ceased. A book my publisher had been about to publish was stranded when the printer shut down. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, stocked with reference books, hard-to-find editions I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Separation and Grief

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer locations – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the faraway, a factory was burning, black smoke coiling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to chase them.

During those days, emotions moved through the city like weather: instant fear, apprehension, righteous anger at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and sources that translation demands.

Outside, shockwaves blew windows from their sashes; at a relative's house, every window was destroyed, the belongings lay broken, personal effects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an stand, choosing not to let quiet and dust have the final say.

Translating Grief

A picture was shared digitally of a 23-year-old poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman dashing between alleyways, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some repressed memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

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

Translation as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of ruin, I found myself working on a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet kept creating until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth reaching toward.

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

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his cell, asking for more resources, insisting that linguistic work become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, aspiration, practice, support, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked Legacy

And then came the photograph. I noticed it on a news site and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, devoid 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 apparent – 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 full weight of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, determined rejection to disappear.