Within the Devastated Remains of an Residential Building, I Found a Book I’d Translated

Among the wreckage of a collapsed apartment block, a solitary vision lingered with me: a volume I had converted from English to Persian, resting partly concealed in dust and soot. Its jacket was ripped and dirtied, its leaves curled and singed, but it was still legible. Still communicating.

An Urban Center Under Assault

Two days earlier, missiles commenced attacking the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, powerful explosions. The web was totally severed. I was in my apartment, translating a book about what it means to transport language across languages, and the ethics and concerns of occupying someone else's voice. As edifices fell, I sat revising a text that contended, in its understated way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything halted. A project my publisher had been about to publish was stuck when the printer closed. Retailers closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too close, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the shelves in my apartment, stocked with dictionaries, valuable editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Loss

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous towns – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a photo: in the faraway, a plant was ablaze, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and peril seemed to pursue them.

During those days, emotions passed over the city like a storm: swift terror, anxiety, indignation at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant queries and references that translation demands.

Outside, concussive forces tore windows from their sashes; at a cousin's house, every window was destroyed, the furniture lay damaged, household items scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, painting at an stand, declining to let silence and dirt have the ultimate victory.

Translating Grief

A picture was shared digitally of a young poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman running between passages, yelling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated remembrance. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: turning devastation into art, demise into poetry, sorrow into quest.

The Work as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself translating a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal 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 striving for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than literary craft: it was an act of defiance, of remaining, of persisting.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more resources, insisting that linguistic work become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, rigor, support, and analogy” all at once.

An Enduring Voice

And then came the picture. I saw it on a platform and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, damaged but whole, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, stripped of life among the rubble 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 looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the true gravity 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 remain when everything else falls away. It is a quiet, stubborn rejection to disappear.