Amid those Ruined Remains of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Book I Had Rendered

Within the rubble of a collapsed structure, a particular vision lingered with me: a tome I had translated from English to Persian, lying partly concealed in dust and ash. Its front was ripped and dirtied, its pages bent and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still communicating.

A Metropolis During Bombardment

Two days earlier, missiles began striking the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, forceful explosions. The web was entirely severed. I was in my apartment, working on a work about what it means to transport words across cultures, and the morals and anxieties of taking on a different narrative. As structures came down, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything ceased. A manuscript my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the facility closed. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the shelves in my apartment, holding dictionaries, rare books I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Distance and Loss

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the distance, a plant was ablaze, black smoke coiling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings passed over the city like a front: swift terror, anxiety, indignation at the injustice, then numbness. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant searches and references that translation demands.

Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their frames; at a relative's house, every pane was destroyed, the possessions lay damaged, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an easel, choosing not to let quiet and dirt have the final say.

Converting Grief

A image circulated online of a 23-year-old poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing went spread rapidly with her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an elderly woman dashing between passages, calling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some repressed recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning ruin into art, loss into lines, sorrow into longing.

The Work as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by devastation, I found myself rendering a children’s tale 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 creating until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all desired – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond a skill: it was an act of perseverance, of holding one's ground, of enduring.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher 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, goal, rigor, support, and metaphor” all at once.

A Scarred Voice

And then came the picture. I saw it on a news site and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, marked but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, devoid of life among the concrete and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been unseen, 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 complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under attack, 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 falls away. It is a subtle, unyielding declination to be silenced.