Among the Bombed-Out Remains of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Book I’d Translated

In the rubble of a fallen apartment block, a single image remained with me: a volume I had converted from the English language to Farsi, lying partially covered in dust and ash. Its cover was ripped and stained, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still legible. Still communicating.

A Metropolis Amid Bombardment

Two days prior, rockets started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, violent detonations. The web was completely severed. I was in my flat, translating a text about what it means to move text across cultures, and the principles and concerns of occupying someone else's perspective. As structures came down, I sat revising a text that contended, in its subtle way, for the persistence of purpose.

Everything ceased. A book my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the facility closed. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. 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 worked on. That library was my career's work, 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 safer locations – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a image: in the faraway, a industrial site was burning, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to pursue them.

During those days, moods swept through the city like a storm: sudden terror, apprehension, righteous anger at the injustice, then apathy. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant searches and sources that the craft demands.

Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every pane was shattered, the belongings lay ruined, objects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an stand, refusing to let quiet and debris have the ultimate victory.

Transforming Grief

A image spread online of a young artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went spread rapidly with her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an aged woman dashing between alleys, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some repressed recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

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

The Craft as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by ruin, I found myself working on a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all yearned for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for.

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond literary craft: it was an act of resistance, of staying put, of holding on.

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

A Scarred Voice

And then came the picture. I saw it on a platform and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, damaged but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, stripped of life among the debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been invisible, 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 act with consequences”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a quiet, determined declination to be silenced.