Among the Bombed-Out Debris of an Apartment Block, I Found a Volume I Had Translated

Within the wreckage of a fallen building, a single image lingered with me: a volume I had translated from English to Farsi, resting partially covered in dust and ash. Its jacket was shredded and stained, its leaves curled and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still communicating.

A City Amid Bombardment

Two days before, missiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, powerful explosions. The digital network was completely severed. I was in my residence, working on a book about what it means to transport text across languages, and the ethics and worries of taking on someone else's perspective. As structures fell, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of significance.

Everything ceased. A project my publishing house had been about to send to press was stuck when the printing house closed. Bookstores closed one by one. One night, when the blasts were too imminent, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, holding lexicons, valuable volumes 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 make it through the night.

Dispersal and Grief

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 background, a industrial site was on fire, black smoke curling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to follow them.

During those days, emotions swept through the city like a front: sudden terror, apprehension, moral outrage at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and references that translation demands.

Outside, blast waves tore windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every window was destroyed, the possessions lay broken, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, painting at an easel, refusing to let quiet and dust have the ultimate victory.

Converting Pain

A image circulated online of a young poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman dashing between alleyways, yelling a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some repressed remembrance. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning destruction into picture, loss into verse, mourning into search.

The Craft as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself translating a fable about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher 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 fact, aspiration, rigor, support, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked Voice

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, marked but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been monochrome, devoid of life among the rubble and ruins. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but enduring.

I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, 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 obliterated. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a subtle, unyielding declination to disappear.