Amid the Ruined Debris of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Volume I Had Rendered

In the wreckage of a destroyed building, a single sight stayed with me: a volume I had rendered from the English language to Farsi, lying partly concealed in dust and soot. Its front was shredded and stained, its sheets curled and scorched, but it was still legible. Still uttering words.

A Metropolis During Attack

Two days prior, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, forceful explosions. The web was entirely disconnected. I was in my flat, translating a book about what it means to transport words across cultures, and the principles and anxieties of taking on someone else's voice. As buildings fell, I sat editing a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the persistence of significance.

Everything stopped. A manuscript my publisher had been about to publish was halted when the printing house shut down. Bookstores closed one by one. One night, when the booms were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, filled with lexicons, rare books I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Separation and Devastation

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be safer towns – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a image: in the background, a industrial site was ablaze, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings passed over the city like a storm: sudden terror, apprehension, indignation at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate queries and sources that the work demands.

Outside, shockwaves blew windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every sheet of glass was destroyed, the possessions lay broken, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an stand, declining to let quiet and debris have the final say.

Converting Pain

A image was shared online of a 23-year-old artist who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared with her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an elderly woman running between alleyways, calling a name. People said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: transforming destruction into picture, demise into verse, mourning into quest.

The Work as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of ruin, I found myself working on a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all desired – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in full 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 linguistic work become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, rigor, support, and symbol” all at once.

A Scarred Voice

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, marked but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been black and white, stripped of life among the rubble and ruins. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but persisting.

I gazed upon 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 fire, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else falls away. It is a subtle, stubborn rejection to disappear.