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

In the debris of a fallen structure, a single image stayed with me: a book I had converted from the English language to Farsi, resting partially covered in dirt and ash. Its jacket was torn and dirtied, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still legible. Still communicating.

A Metropolis During Bombardment

Two days before, missiles began striking the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, forceful explosions. The digital network was totally severed. I was in my flat, translating a book about what it means to transport words across tongues, and the morals and anxieties of occupying a different perspective. As structures came down, I sat revising a text that contended, in its subtle way, for the persistence of purpose.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publisher had been about to send to press was stranded when the facility shut down. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop thinking about the bookshelves in my apartment, holding lexicons, valuable books I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Distance and Loss

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous areas – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a image: in the background, a industrial site was ablaze, thick smoke coiling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to pursue them.

During those days, emotions passed over the city like weather: swift fear, anxiety, indignation at the injustice, then numbness. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and sources that the work demands.

Outside, shockwaves blew windows from their casings; at a cousin's house, every sheet of glass was destroyed, the belongings lay ruined, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an stand, declining to let silence and dirt have the final say.

Transforming Grief

A image circulated online of a young writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her poem went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman running between alleyways, yelling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some repressed memory. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: changing destruction into image, demise into lines, sorrow into search.

Translation as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, I found myself rendering a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant 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 aiming at the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of perseverance, of staying put, of enduring.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his prison cell, asking for more books, insisting that translation become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, goal, practice, anchor, and symbol” all at once.

An Enduring Voice

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, scarred but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in color, 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 stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a act with consequences”, 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 persist when everything else disappears. It is a persistent, determined declination to be silenced.