Within the Bombed-Out Remains of an Apartment Block, I Found a Volume I’d Translated

Within the debris of a destroyed structure, a particular image stayed with me: a book I had translated from the English language to Farsi, resting half-buried in dirt and soot. Its front was ripped and stained, its pages curled and burned, but it was still legible. Still uttering words.

A City Amid Attack

Two days before, projectiles commenced attacking the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, violent blasts. The digital network was entirely severed. I was in my flat, working on a text about what it means to transport words across tongues, and the principles and worries of taking on a different narrative. As edifices fell, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the lasting nature of significance.

Everything ceased. A project my publishing house had been about to publish was stranded when the facility shut down. Bookstores closed one by one. One night, when the booms were too close, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, filled with lexicons, rare editions I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Dispersal and Grief

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a image: in the distance, a industrial site was on fire, black smoke coiling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and peril seemed to pursue them.

During those days, feelings moved through the city like a storm: swift dread, apprehension, indignation at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant searches and sources that translation demands.

Outside, shockwaves ripped windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every window was destroyed, the belongings lay ruined, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an stand, refusing to let silence and dirt have the final say.

Translating Sorrow

A image circulated online of a 23-year-old artist who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an elderly woman dashing between passages, yelling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: turning destruction into art, loss into poetry, grief into longing.

The Craft as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of ruin, I found myself rendering a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet kept creating 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 reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond literary craft: it was an act of perseverance, of holding one's ground, of holding on.

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his confinement, asking for more resources, insisting that language study become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, aspiration, practice, support, and analogy” all at once.

A Scarred Voice

And then came the photograph. I saw it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, scarred but intact, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been black and white, drained of life among the concrete and ruins. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but enduring.

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 attack, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, stubborn rejection to be silenced.