Amid those Ruined Remains of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Book I’d Translated

Within the wreckage of a fallen structure, a solitary sight lingered with me: a tome I had translated from the English language to Farsi, sitting partially covered in dust and soot. Its jacket was shredded and stained, its sheets curled and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still communicating.

A Metropolis Under Attack

Two days prior, projectiles began striking the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, violent explosions. The internet was entirely disconnected. I was in my residence, translating a work about what it means to move words across languages, and the principles and worries of occupying someone else's perspective. As buildings fell, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the endurance of meaning.

Everything halted. A project my publishing house had been about to publish was stranded when the facility closed. Retailers shut one by one. One night, when the explosions were too close, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the shelves in my apartment, holding lexicons, hard-to-find editions 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.

Separation and Grief

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous areas – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a image: in the faraway, a plant was on fire, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly elsewhere, and peril seemed to follow them.

During those days, emotions moved through the city like a storm: instant terror, unease, moral outrage at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and sources that translation demands.

Outside, shockwaves ripped windows from their casings; at a family member's house, every pane was destroyed, the belongings lay broken, personal effects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an stand, refusing to let silence and dust have the ultimate victory.

Converting Pain

A image spread online of a young writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an older woman hurrying between alleyways, calling a name. People said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some repressed memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: transforming ruin into art, death into lines, grief into search.

Translation as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, I found myself translating a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet kept creating until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all longed for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond literary craft: it was an act of resistance, of remaining, of persisting.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that translation become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, rigor, anchor, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked Legacy

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 devoid of color, drained 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 persisting.

I gazed upon 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 attack, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, unyielding rejection to vanish.