Within the Ruined Debris of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Book I Had Translated

In the rubble of a collapsed building, a solitary image stayed with me: a book I had converted from English to Persian, resting partially covered in dust and ash. Its front was torn and dirtied, its pages curled and scorched, but it was still legible. Still speaking.

An Urban Center Amid Bombardment

Two days prior, projectiles commenced attacking the city. There were no alarms, just unexpected, forceful blasts. The web was entirely cut off. I was in my flat, rendering a book about what it means to carry language across cultures, and the morals and anxieties of taking on a different voice. As structures fell, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the lasting nature of significance.

Everything stopped. A project my publishing house had been about to go to print was halted when the facility closed. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, holding lexicons, rare books I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Separation and Devastation

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer 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 industrial site was on fire, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, emotions passed over the city like weather: instant terror, apprehension, indignation at the unfairness, then numbness. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant searches and materials that the craft demands.

Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every window was shattered, the furniture lay broken, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, working at an easel, refusing to let quiet and debris have the last word.

Converting Pain

A picture spread digitally of a 23-year-old poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared with her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an older woman dashing between alleyways, yelling a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some repressed remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: transforming ruin into image, loss into poetry, sorrow into quest.

Translation as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet persisted working until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than a skill: it was an act of resistance, of holding one's ground, 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 cell, asking for more resources, insisting that language study become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, aspiration, discipline, foundation, and metaphor” all at once.

A Marked Voice

And then came the photograph. I spotted it on a platform and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, damaged but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, devoid of life among the debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but enduring.

I gazed upon 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 forgotten. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else disappears. It is a quiet, determined refusal to vanish.