Within the Ruined Debris of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Book I Had Translated

Among the wreckage of a destroyed building, a particular vision stayed with me: a volume I had converted from the English language to Persian, resting partly concealed in dirt and soot. Its jacket was ripped and smudged, its sheets curled and singed, but it was still legible. Still communicating.

A Metropolis Under Bombardment

Two days before, projectiles commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, forceful explosions. The digital network was completely severed. I was in my flat, translating a book about what it means to carry language across languages, and the ethics and anxieties of taking on someone else's narrative. As buildings came down, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of purpose.

Everything ceased. A book my publisher had been about to publish was stuck when the printing house ceased operations. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, filled with reference books, hard-to-find books I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Distance and Devastation

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

During those days, emotions swept through the city like a storm: instant dread, anxiety, indignation at the injustice, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and materials that the work demands.

Outside, concussive forces tore windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every sheet of glass was broken, the possessions lay broken, objects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an stand, declining to let quiet and dust have the last word.

Converting Pain

A picture circulated on social media of a 23-year-old artist who was died when missiles struck a building. Her verse went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman running between passages, calling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some deep-seated memory. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: changing devastation into art, death into verse, grief into longing.

Translation as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself translating a fable about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant 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 reaching for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all yearned for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more books, insisting that translation become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, aspiration, practice, anchor, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked Voice

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 translations, damaged but intact, my name shown on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained of life among the debris 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 gazed upon 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 fire, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else disappears. It is a subtle, unyielding rejection to disappear.