Within those Bombed-Out Debris of an Residential Building, I Found a Volume I Had Translated

Among the wreckage of a destroyed building, a solitary vision stayed with me: a book I had translated from the English language to Persian, resting partially covered in dirt and soot. Its jacket was torn and dirtied, its sheets curled and scorched, but it was still readable. Still communicating.

An Urban Center Under Assault

Two days before, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, powerful detonations. The digital network was totally disconnected. I was in my flat, rendering a text about what it means to transport words across languages, and the morals and worries of occupying another’s perspective. As structures came down, I sat editing a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the lasting nature of purpose.

Everything halted. A book my publisher had been about to send to press was stranded when the printing house ceased operations. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, holding lexicons, valuable books I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Loss

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous 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 image: in the distance, a industrial site was ablaze, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to pursue them.

During those days, moods moved through the city like a storm: sudden dread, anxiety, moral outrage at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and references that the craft demands.

Outside, shockwaves tore windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every sheet of glass was broken, the belongings lay ruined, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an easel, declining to let quiet and dust have the final say.

Translating Grief

A picture was shared online of a young artist who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an older woman dashing between alleyways, shouting a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some buried remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: transforming devastation into image, death into lines, mourning into search.

The Work as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself translating a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all yearned for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth striving for.

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond a skill: it was an act of perseverance, of staying put, of holding on.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that translation become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, goal, practice, foundation, and metaphor” all at once.

A Scarred Legacy

And then came the picture. I saw it on a website and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, damaged but surviving, 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 concrete and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but persisting.

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 complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else disappears. It is a subtle, determined declination to be silenced.