Among those Bombed-Out Debris of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Volume I’d Translated

Among the debris of a destroyed structure, a solitary sight stayed with me: a tome I had rendered from English to Persian, resting partially covered in dirt and soot. Its jacket was torn and smudged, its sheets bent and singed, but it was still readable. Still communicating.

A Metropolis Under Bombardment

Two days prior, rockets commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, forceful explosions. The digital network was entirely cut off. I was in my flat, translating a book about what it means to transport language across cultures, and the ethics and anxieties of occupying another’s narrative. As buildings came down, I sat editing a text that argued, in its subtle way, for the persistence of purpose.

Everything ceased. A book my publisher had been about to publish was stuck when the facility ceased operations. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the shelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, valuable books I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Loss

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the distance, a plant was burning, black smoke coiling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to chase them.

During those days, emotions swept through the city like weather: instant dread, anxiety, righteous anger at the injustice, then apathy. Beyond the psychological cost, the shelling eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and references that the work demands.

Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every pane was destroyed, the possessions lay damaged, household items scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an easel, choosing not to let quiet and dust have the ultimate victory.

Converting Sorrow

A photograph circulated online of a 23-year-old writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman dashing between alleyways, yelling a name. People said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated remembrance. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: changing ruin into picture, demise into verse, mourning into search.

Translation as Persistence

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

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond an art form: it was an act of defiance, of staying put, of enduring.

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

An Enduring Voice

And then came the image. I spotted it on a website and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, damaged but intact, 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 ruins. For most of my career, I had been invisible, 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 act with consequences”, 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 forgotten. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else disappears. It is a persistent, determined rejection to be silenced.