Amid the Devastated Debris of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Book I Had Translated

Within the wreckage of a fallen building, a particular sight lingered with me: a tome I had converted from English to Farsi, lying partly concealed in dirt and ash. Its cover was shredded and dirtied, its pages curled and burned, but it was still legible. Still communicating.

A City During Attack

Two days earlier, missiles began striking the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, violent detonations. The digital network was completely disconnected. I was in my residence, rendering a book about what it means to move language across tongues, and the principles and anxieties of inhabiting another’s perspective. As buildings collapsed, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the persistence of significance.

Everything stopped. A project my publisher had been about to send to press was stuck when the printer ceased operations. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, holding reference books, rare editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Separation and Loss

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a picture: in the distance, a industrial site was on fire, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, emotions moved through the city like weather: swift fear, unease, moral outrage at the injustice, 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 materials that the craft demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every sheet of glass was broken, the furniture lay broken, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, working at an stand, refusing to let silence and dirt have the ultimate victory.

Transforming Sorrow

A photograph circulated on social media of a young poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an older woman hurrying between alleyways, yelling a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some deep-seated recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

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

The Craft as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself rendering a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will get better 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 continued creating until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth reaching toward.

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

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more resources, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, practice, foundation, and metaphor” all at once.

A Scarred Legacy

And then came the photograph. I noticed it on a website and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, damaged but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the debris and ruins. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but enduring.

I looked 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 fire, was to say: “this voice had significance”. 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 subtle, stubborn rejection to disappear.