Among the Devastated Debris of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Volume I Had Rendered

Among the rubble of a destroyed structure, a particular sight remained with me: a book I had rendered from the English language to Persian, lying half-buried in dirt and soot. Its cover was torn and stained, its leaves bent and burned, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking.

An Urban Center Amid Bombardment

Two days earlier, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just abrupt, powerful explosions. The digital network was completely cut off. I was in my residence, working on a book about what it means to carry language across tongues, and the ethics and concerns of taking on another’s narrative. As structures collapsed, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the lasting nature of meaning.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to send to press was halted when the printing house ceased operations. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the bookshelves in my apartment, filled with reference books, hard-to-find books I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That collection was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Separation and Devastation

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 photo: in the faraway, a industrial site was on fire, thick smoke coiling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods swept through the city like a storm: sudden fear, anxiety, indignation at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and sources that the craft demands.

Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every window was shattered, the possessions lay damaged, objects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, painting at an stand, declining to let stillness and dirt have the last word.

Transforming Grief

A photograph spread online of a young artist who was died 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 dashing between alleyways, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some repressed remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning ruin into picture, death into verse, sorrow into quest.

Translation as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of destruction, I found myself translating 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 continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more resources, insisting that linguistic work become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, discipline, foundation, and analogy” all at once.

A Marked Legacy

And then came the picture. I saw it on a website and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, damaged but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, devoid 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 visible – scarred, but enduring.

I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the complete significance 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 endure when everything else disappears. It is a persistent, stubborn declination to disappear.