Amid the Devastated Remains of an Apartment Block, I Found a Volume I’d Rendered

Among the debris of a fallen building, a single sight remained with me: a tome I had rendered from English to Farsi, lying half-buried in dust and ash. Its cover was torn and dirtied, its pages bent and scorched, but it was still legible. Still uttering words.

An Urban Center During Bombardment

Two days earlier, missiles commenced attacking the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, powerful detonations. The web was totally cut off. I was in my apartment, rendering a book about what it means to move text across languages, and the ethics and anxieties of taking on someone else's voice. As edifices fell, I sat revising a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the endurance of significance.

Everything halted. A project my publishing house had been about to send to press was halted when the facility ceased operations. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the shelves in my apartment, filled with lexicons, rare editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Grief

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a picture: in the faraway, a plant was on fire, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings passed over the city like a storm: instant terror, apprehension, righteous anger at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate look-ups and materials that translation demands.

Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their sashes; at a cousin's house, every pane was shattered, the possessions lay damaged, household items scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, painting at an stand, choosing not to let quiet and debris have the final say.

Translating Sorrow

A picture circulated on social media of a young artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared next to her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an older woman dashing between passages, shouting a name. People said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some repressed recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning destruction into art, demise into poetry, mourning into quest.

The Craft as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst ruin, I found myself translating 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 working until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all yearned for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of defiance, of staying put, of persisting.

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

A Scarred Work

And then came the picture. I saw it on a news site and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, drained of life among the debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but surviving.

I looked 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 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 endure when everything else disappears. It is a quiet, unyielding rejection to be silenced.