Among those Devastated Debris of an Residential Building, I Saw a Book I’d Translated

Among the debris of a fallen structure, a solitary vision remained with me: a book I had converted from the English language to Farsi, sitting partially covered in dirt and ash. Its cover was ripped and dirtied, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still communicating.

A Metropolis Amid Bombardment

Two days before, rockets commenced attacking the city. There were no alarms, just abrupt, violent blasts. The web was entirely cut off. I was in my apartment, rendering a text about what it means to carry text across cultures, and the ethics and worries of inhabiting a different voice. As buildings came down, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its understated way, for the persistence of purpose.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to publish was stranded when the printer closed. Bookstores closed one by one. One night, when the booms were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, stocked with dictionaries, rare books I had spent years gathering 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 Devastation

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a photo: in the background, a industrial site was burning, black smoke coiling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to pursue them.

During those days, feelings moved through the city like a storm: instant dread, apprehension, moral outrage at the unfairness, then numbness. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate queries and references that the craft demands.

Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their sashes; at a cousin's house, every window was destroyed, the possessions lay ruined, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, working at an easel, refusing to let quiet and dirt have the last word.

Translating Sorrow

A photograph circulated digitally of a young artist who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an older woman dashing between alleyways, yelling a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some repressed recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: turning devastation into picture, demise into lines, grief into longing.

The Work as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, 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 significant meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued creating until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing.

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

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, hope, discipline, support, and analogy” all at once.

A Scarred Voice

And then came the photograph. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, damaged but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, devoid of life among the concrete and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but persisting.

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 mattered”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else disappears. It is a quiet, stubborn declination to be silenced.