Among the Devastated Debris of an Residential Building, I Found a Book I Had Rendered

Among the rubble of a destroyed structure, a solitary image lingered with me: a volume I had translated from the English language to Farsi, lying half-buried in dust and ash. Its front was ripped and dirtied, its pages curled and scorched, but it was still readable. Still speaking.

A City Amid Attack

Two days before, missiles commenced attacking the city. There were no alarms, just abrupt, violent blasts. The internet was completely cut off. I was in my apartment, rendering a work about what it means to transport text across tongues, and the morals and concerns of occupying a different narrative. As edifices came down, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything halted. A book my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the printer shut down. Bookstores shut one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the bookshelves in my apartment, filled with reference books, valuable books I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Distance and Grief

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a photo: in the faraway, a plant was on fire, black smoke curling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly elsewhere, and peril seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings passed over the city like a storm: swift terror, apprehension, righteous anger at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the emotional toll, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and references that translation demands.

Outside, shockwaves blew windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every window was shattered, the furniture lay ruined, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an stand, choosing not to let quiet and dirt have the last word.

Translating Sorrow

A photograph was shared digitally of a 23-year-old artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her poem went spread rapidly with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an older woman hurrying between passages, calling a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried memory. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: turning devastation into art, death into lines, grief into longing.

Translation as Resistance

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

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than a skill: it was an act of perseverance, of holding one's ground, of holding on.

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 dictionaries, insisting that translation become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, practice, foundation, and symbol” all at once.

An Enduring 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 renditions, scarred but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, drained of life among the concrete and debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but enduring.

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 complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a quiet, determined refusal to be silenced.