Within the Bombed-Out Remains of an Apartment Block, I Found a Book I Had Rendered

In the rubble of a fallen structure, a solitary sight stayed with me: a volume I had rendered from English to Farsi, resting partly concealed in dirt and ash. Its cover was shredded and smudged, its leaves bent and singed, but it was still legible. Still speaking.

A City During Attack

Two days earlier, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, violent blasts. The digital network was entirely severed. I was in my residence, translating a book about what it means to move text across tongues, and the morals and anxieties of inhabiting someone else's narrative. As buildings came down, I sat editing a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the lasting nature of significance.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publisher had been about to publish was stuck when the facility ceased operations. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, stocked with reference books, rare volumes 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.

Dispersal and Devastation

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous towns – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a picture: in the distance, a plant was on fire, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, emotions moved through the city like a front: swift dread, unease, indignation at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the personal impact, the attack eradicated 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 broken, the belongings lay ruined, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an easel, declining to let quiet and dust have the final say.

Converting Grief

A image circulated on social media of a 23-year-old artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her verse went was widely shared next to her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an older woman dashing between passages, calling a name. People said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: changing devastation into picture, loss into verse, sorrow into longing.

The Work as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst ruin, I found myself rendering a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all yearned for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of perseverance, of remaining, of holding on.

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

An Enduring 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 translations, marked 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 debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – 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 full weight of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else disappears. It is a persistent, stubborn rejection to vanish.