Among the Bombed-Out Debris of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Volume I’d Translated

Within the rubble of a collapsed apartment block, a single sight lingered with me: a book I had rendered from English to Persian, sitting half-buried in dirt and soot. Its jacket was shredded and dirtied, its sheets curled and scorched, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

An Urban Center During Assault

Two days prior, missiles commenced attacking the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, violent explosions. The internet was totally cut off. I was in my residence, translating a book about what it means to carry language across tongues, and the morals and worries of taking on someone else's voice. As edifices came down, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the persistence of purpose.

Everything ceased. A book my publisher had been about to publish was halted when the printing house closed. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, holding lexicons, valuable volumes I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That library was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Separation and Grief

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a photo: in the background, a factory was burning, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and peril seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings swept through the city like a front: swift terror, anxiety, moral outrage at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the psychological cost, the shelling eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and materials that translation demands.

Outside, blast waves tore windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every pane was broken, the possessions lay damaged, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, painting at an easel, choosing not to let quiet and dirt have the last word.

Converting Sorrow

A photograph circulated digitally of a 23-year-old artist who was died 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 elderly woman running between alleyways, calling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some repressed recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning devastation into image, loss into lines, sorrow into quest.

The Work as Persistence

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 possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet kept working until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than a skill: it was an act of defiance, of staying put, of holding on.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader 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, goal, practice, support, and analogy” all at once.

A Marked Voice

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, marked but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, stripped of life among the debris and debris. 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 full weight of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, stubborn refusal to be silenced.