Amid the Ruined Debris of an Apartment Block, I Found a Book I Had Translated

Among the debris of a fallen building, a solitary image remained with me: a volume I had rendered from the English language to Farsi, lying partially covered in dust and soot. Its jacket was ripped and stained, its sheets curled and scorched, but it was still legible. Still uttering words.

A Metropolis Amid Bombardment

Two days before, missiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, forceful blasts. The digital network was entirely severed. I was in my flat, translating a text about what it means to carry text across tongues, and the ethics and concerns of occupying someone else's voice. As buildings collapsed, I sat revising a text that contended, in its subtle way, for the endurance of significance.

Everything stopped. A book my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the printer shut down. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, stocked with reference books, rare editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Separation and Grief

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous towns – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a picture: in the background, a factory was ablaze, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, emotions moved through the city like weather: instant terror, unease, moral outrage at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and materials that the work demands.

Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every pane was broken, the belongings lay broken, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an easel, refusing to let quiet and dirt have the final say.

Converting Grief

A photograph circulated online of a 23-year-old artist who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an older woman running between alleys, yelling 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 looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning destruction into art, loss into verse, sorrow into search.

The Craft as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet kept producing until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all yearned for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond a skill: it was an act of resistance, of remaining, of persisting.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that linguistic work become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, aspiration, discipline, foundation, and analogy” all at once.

A Marked Voice

And then came the photograph. I noticed it on a news site and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, marked but whole, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained of life among the rubble 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 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 obliterated. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, stubborn rejection to vanish.