Among the Ruined Remains of an Residential Building, I Found a Book I Had Translated

Among the wreckage of a collapsed apartment block, a solitary sight lingered with me: a volume I had rendered from the English language to Persian, lying partly concealed in dust and soot. Its cover was shredded and stained, its sheets curled and burned, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking.

An Urban Center Under Assault

Two days earlier, missiles commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, forceful blasts. The web was entirely cut off. I was in my flat, translating a book about what it means to transport text across tongues, and the principles and anxieties of inhabiting another’s voice. As buildings fell, I sat editing a text that contended, in its subtle way, for the endurance of meaning.

Everything stopped. A manuscript my publisher had been about to send to press was halted when the printer closed. Bookstores 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 worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, stocked with dictionaries, rare editions I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Distance and Loss

My partner 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 pulling out, she sent me a photo: in the distance, a plant was on fire, dark smoke curling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like a front: sudden terror, apprehension, righteous anger at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the personal impact, the shelling eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and sources that the work demands.

Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the belongings lay ruined, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an stand, choosing not to let stillness and debris have the last word.

Converting Sorrow

A photograph circulated digitally of a 23-year-old writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman dashing between alleys, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some buried recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning destruction into picture, death into verse, mourning into quest.

The Craft as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all yearned 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 persisting.

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that translation become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, practice, support, and analogy” all at once.

An Enduring Work

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 translations, scarred but intact, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been black and white, stripped of life among the debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but enduring.

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 bombardment, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, determined refusal to disappear.