Within the Devastated Remains of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Volume I Had Translated

In the wreckage of a collapsed structure, a solitary sight remained with me: a book I had rendered from the English language to Persian, resting partially covered in dust and soot. Its cover was torn and dirtied, its leaves curled and scorched, but it was still readable. Still communicating.

An Urban Center During Assault

Two days earlier, rockets commenced attacking the city. There were no warnings, just abrupt, forceful explosions. The web was completely severed. I was in my flat, rendering a text about what it means to transport text across cultures, and the ethics and worries of taking on someone else's voice. As structures fell, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the lasting nature of meaning.

Everything ceased. A manuscript my publisher had been about to send to press was stranded when the printing house shut down. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the explosions were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop thinking about the shelves in my apartment, holding dictionaries, rare editions I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Distance and Loss

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure 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 photo: in the background, a plant was on fire, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to pursue them.

During those days, emotions moved through the city like weather: sudden dread, anxiety, righteous anger at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and materials that translation demands.

Outside, shockwaves ripped windows from their sashes; at a relative's house, every window was broken, the possessions lay damaged, objects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an stand, refusing to let quiet and dirt have the last word.

Transforming Grief

A image spread on social media of a young writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an aged woman hurrying between alleyways, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: changing destruction into picture, loss into verse, mourning into search.

The Work as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself working on a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his prison cell, asking for more resources, insisting that language study become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, discipline, anchor, and symbol” all at once.

A Scarred Voice

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a website and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, marked but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained of life among the concrete and debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, 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 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 remain when everything else falls away. It is a quiet, determined rejection to vanish.