Within the Bombed-Out Remains of an Residential Building, I Found a Book I’d Translated

In the wreckage of a collapsed apartment block, a particular sight remained with me: a book I had rendered from English to Persian, sitting half-buried in dust and ash. Its front was shredded and stained, its sheets bent and burned, but it was still decipherable. Still uttering words.

A City During Assault

Two days before, rockets started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, forceful blasts. The digital network was entirely severed. I was in my apartment, rendering a text about what it means to move language across cultures, and the principles and concerns of taking on someone else's voice. As buildings came down, I sat editing a text that contended, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of purpose.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to go to print was halted when the printing house shut down. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, stocked with dictionaries, valuable editions I had spent years gathering 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.

Distance and Loss

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer locations – 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 image: in the background, a industrial site was burning, black smoke coiling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to pursue them.

During those days, feelings swept through the city like a storm: swift fear, anxiety, indignation at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and sources that the craft demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every window was shattered, the belongings lay broken, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an easel, refusing to let stillness and debris have the last word.

Transforming Pain

A image circulated online of a young artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her verse went was widely shared next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an aged woman hurrying between alleyways, calling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried memory. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: changing destruction into image, loss into poetry, mourning into search.

Translation as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself translating a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than literary craft: it was an act of resistance, of remaining, of holding on.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his prison cell, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that translation become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, rigor, support, and symbol” all at once.

An Enduring Work

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a news site 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 color, but it might as well have been black and white, 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 seen – scarred, but surviving.

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 bombardment, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, stubborn rejection to be silenced.