Among the Bombed-Out Debris of an Residential Building, I Saw a Volume I Had Rendered

Among the debris of a collapsed structure, a solitary sight stayed with me: a book I had converted from English to Persian, lying partly concealed in dirt and soot. Its front was torn and dirtied, its leaves curled and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking.

A City Amid Assault

Two days before, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, violent blasts. The internet was completely severed. I was in my residence, translating a work about what it means to transport language across tongues, and the principles and anxieties of inhabiting another’s voice. As edifices came down, I sat editing a text that contended, in its understated way, for the persistence of meaning.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to go to print was halted when the printing house shut down. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too close, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, filled with reference books, valuable volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That collection was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Separation and Grief

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a photo: in the distance, a plant was burning, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like weather: sudden dread, anxiety, moral outrage at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant queries and references that the craft demands.

Outside, shockwaves tore windows from their casings; at a family member's house, every pane was broken, the belongings lay damaged, objects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an easel, declining to let quiet and dust have the final say.

Translating Sorrow

A image spread on social media of a 23-year-old poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an elderly woman running between alleys, yelling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some deep-seated recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

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

The Craft as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst 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 deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued creating until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than a skill: it was an act of perseverance, of remaining, of enduring.

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

A Marked Work

And then came the image. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, marked but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but surviving.

I stared 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 had significance”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else disappears. It is a subtle, stubborn refusal to be silenced.