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

Within the wreckage of a collapsed structure, a single image stayed with me: a volume I had rendered from the English language to Farsi, sitting half-buried in dust and ash. Its jacket was ripped and smudged, its sheets bent and scorched, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

A City Amid Assault

Two days before, projectiles commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, violent explosions. The digital network was totally cut off. I was in my residence, working on a text about what it means to move language across tongues, and the principles and worries of occupying another’s voice. As structures collapsed, I sat revising a text that argued, in its subtle way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything ceased. A manuscript my publisher had been about to publish was stuck when the facility closed. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, holding reference books, valuable editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That collection was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Separation and Loss

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous locations – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a photo: in the distance, a factory was on fire, black smoke coiling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and threat seemed to follow them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like a front: sudden fear, apprehension, moral outrage at the unfairness, then numbness. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and references that the craft demands.

Outside, shockwaves blew windows from their casings; at a cousin's house, every pane was destroyed, the possessions lay broken, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, creating at an easel, refusing to let quiet and debris have the last word.

Transforming Sorrow

A picture was shared on social media of a young poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went viral alongside her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman dashing between alleys, calling a name. People said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried memory. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: turning devastation into picture, death into lines, sorrow into quest.

Translation as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by devastation, I found myself translating 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 profound 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 unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader 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, hope, discipline, anchor, and metaphor” all at once.

A Marked Voice

And then came the image. I saw it on a website and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, marked but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained of life among the concrete and ruins. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but surviving.

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 true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a quiet, determined declination to disappear.