Within the Ruined Debris of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Volume I’d Translated

Within the wreckage of a destroyed apartment block, a particular image remained with me: a tome I had converted from the English language to Farsi, lying partially covered in dirt and ash. Its front was ripped and stained, its leaves curled and scorched, but it was still readable. Still communicating.

An Urban Center Amid Attack

Two days prior, rockets began striking the city. There were no alarms, just abrupt, violent explosions. The digital network was totally disconnected. I was in my apartment, working on a text about what it means to carry words across languages, and the morals and anxieties of occupying someone else's perspective. As edifices came down, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its understated way, for the persistence of purpose.

Everything stopped. A book my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the facility ceased operations. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, filled with reference books, hard-to-find volumes I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Dispersal and Loss

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the background, a factory was ablaze, black smoke curling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and threat seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings moved through the city like a front: instant dread, anxiety, moral outrage at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant queries and references that the craft demands.

Outside, shockwaves ripped windows from their casings; at a cousin's house, every window was destroyed, the possessions lay ruined, objects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an stand, refusing to let quiet and dust have the last word.

Translating Grief

A image was shared digitally of a 23-year-old artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between passages, shouting a name. People said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning destruction into image, demise into verse, mourning into longing.

The Work as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself working on a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued working until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth reaching toward.

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

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his cell, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that language study become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, aspiration, discipline, foundation, and metaphor” all at once.

An Enduring Legacy

And then came the photograph. I saw it on a news site and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, scarred but whole, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, 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 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 full weight of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else falls away. It is a quiet, determined rejection to be silenced.