Within those Devastated Debris of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Volume I Had Translated

In the debris of a destroyed apartment block, a single vision stayed with me: a tome I had translated from English to Persian, resting partly concealed in dust and ash. Its front was shredded and dirtied, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still legible. Still speaking.

A Metropolis During Assault

Two days earlier, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, forceful explosions. The web was completely cut off. I was in my residence, working on a book about what it means to move text across languages, and the morals and concerns of occupying someone else's perspective. As structures came down, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the persistence of significance.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to publish was stuck when the printer ceased operations. Bookstores 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 worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, holding lexicons, hard-to-find volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That collection was my career'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 struck. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the faraway, a industrial site was on fire, black smoke curling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and peril seemed to chase them.

During those days, feelings swept through the city like a storm: instant dread, anxiety, moral outrage at the injustice, then numbness. Beyond the psychological cost, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate look-ups and sources that the work demands.

Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their sashes; at a relative's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the possessions lay broken, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an easel, refusing to let quiet and dirt have the last word.

Converting Sorrow

A image spread online of a 23-year-old writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her verse went was widely shared with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman running between alleys, 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 remembrance. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: turning destruction into picture, loss into verse, mourning into quest.

The Craft as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself rendering a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued working until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at 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 beyond an art form: it was an act of resistance, of remaining, of persisting.

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more resources, insisting that linguistic work become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, discipline, foundation, and metaphor” all at once.

A Scarred Work

And then came the image. I saw it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, marked but whole, my name shown on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, drained of life among the rubble and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but enduring.

I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, unyielding declination to disappear.