Within the Bombed-Out Debris of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Volume I Had Translated

Within the debris of a collapsed building, a particular sight lingered with me: a book I had rendered from the English language to Persian, resting partially covered in dirt and soot. Its front was shredded and stained, its pages bent and singed, but it was still legible. Still uttering words.

A City During Assault

Two days earlier, missiles began striking the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, powerful detonations. The digital network was completely cut off. I was in my flat, rendering a book about what it means to move words across languages, and the principles and concerns of occupying another’s voice. As structures came down, I sat editing a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the persistence of meaning.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publisher had been about to publish was halted when the printer shut down. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop thinking about the shelves in my apartment, filled with reference books, rare books I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive 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 targeted. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a photo: in the distance, a factory was ablaze, dark smoke coiling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and peril seemed to follow them.

During those days, emotions moved through the city like a front: swift dread, anxiety, righteous anger at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the personal impact, the shelling destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate queries and references that the craft demands.

Outside, shockwaves blew windows from their casings; at a family member's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the furniture lay damaged, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, creating at an easel, refusing to let silence and debris have the ultimate victory.

Converting Grief

A photograph spread online of a young writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared next to her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman hurrying between alleyways, yelling a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: changing destruction into image, loss into lines, mourning into longing.

Translation as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of ruin, I found myself working on a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet kept working until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all desired – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth pursuing.

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

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

A Marked Work

And then came the photograph. I saw it on a website and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, devoid of life among the debris and wreckage. 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 mattered”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a quiet, determined rejection to be silenced.