Amid those Ruined Remains of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Book I Had Translated

Among the wreckage of a destroyed structure, a single vision remained with me: a volume I had rendered from English to Persian, sitting half-buried in dirt and ash. Its cover was ripped and stained, its leaves bent and singed, but it was still readable. Still speaking.

An Urban Center Under Assault

Two days before, rockets began striking the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, forceful blasts. The digital network was completely severed. I was in my flat, working on a book about what it means to transport language across languages, and the morals and anxieties of occupying another’s narrative. As structures collapsed, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of significance.

Everything halted. A project my publishing house had been about to publish was halted when the facility closed. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, stocked with dictionaries, valuable volumes I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my career'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 more secure areas – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a photo: in the background, a industrial site was burning, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to follow them.

During those days, emotions swept through the city like a front: sudden terror, unease, moral outrage at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the personal impact, the shelling eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate look-ups and materials that the work demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every pane was shattered, the possessions lay broken, objects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, painting at an easel, choosing not to let stillness and debris have the final say.

Converting Grief

A image was shared on social media of a young artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral next to her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an elderly woman dashing between alleys, calling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some deep-seated remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: changing destruction into picture, demise into lines, sorrow into longing.

The Work as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, I found myself translating a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet kept producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all yearned for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of enduring.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his cell, asking for more resources, insisting that linguistic work become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, aspiration, discipline, support, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked 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 translations, scarred 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 debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but surviving.

I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice had significance”. 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 subtle, stubborn declination to be silenced.