Amid the Devastated Debris of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Volume I’d Rendered

Within the rubble of a collapsed apartment block, a particular image remained with me: a volume I had converted from the English language to Farsi, lying half-buried in dust and ash. Its front was ripped and dirtied, its leaves bent and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still uttering words.

An Urban Center Under Assault

Two days prior, rockets began striking the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, violent detonations. The web was entirely cut off. I was in my flat, translating a text about what it means to transport text across tongues, and the morals and anxieties of inhabiting another’s perspective. As buildings came down, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its understated way, for the endurance of meaning.

Everything stopped. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to go to print was stuck when the facility ceased operations. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, valuable editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Separation and Devastation

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the faraway, a plant was ablaze, thick smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and peril seemed to follow them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like a front: sudden dread, unease, indignation at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate queries and references that the work demands.

Outside, blast waves tore windows from their casings; at a family member's house, every pane was shattered, the furniture lay broken, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an stand, declining to let silence and debris have the last word.

Transforming Grief

A picture was shared online of a young poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between alleys, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: transforming destruction into image, death into poetry, sorrow into quest.

The Work as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself translating a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued creating until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all yearned for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for.

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond literary craft: it was an act of perseverance, 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 philosopher in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, goal, rigor, anchor, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked Voice

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

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 bombardment, 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 crumbles. It is a persistent, stubborn rejection to disappear.