Within those Ruined Debris of an Residential Building, I Found a Book I Had Rendered

Among the wreckage of a collapsed apartment block, a single sight lingered with me: a book I had converted from English to Persian, lying partly concealed in dirt and ash. Its cover was shredded and smudged, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still readable. Still communicating.

An Urban Center During Assault

Two days before, rockets commenced attacking the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, violent explosions. The digital network was entirely severed. I was in my apartment, working on a book about what it means to move words across languages, and the ethics and anxieties of occupying a different narrative. As edifices collapsed, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the persistence of significance.

Everything stopped. A book my publishing house had been about to send to press was stranded when the facility ceased operations. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the bookshelves in my apartment, filled with reference books, rare books I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Dispersal and Grief

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a photo: in the faraway, a plant was ablaze, dark smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, moods swept through the city like a front: swift dread, anxiety, moral outrage at the injustice, then detachment. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and materials that the craft demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every window was broken, the belongings lay broken, household items scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, working at an stand, choosing not to let silence and dirt have the last word.

Translating Pain

A picture spread on social media of a young artist who was died when missiles struck a building. Her verse went spread rapidly with her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an older woman hurrying between alleys, yelling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some repressed recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: changing destruction into image, death into verse, mourning into quest.

The Work as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself translating 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 significant meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all yearned for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his confinement, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that linguistic work become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, aspiration, practice, support, and analogy” all at once.

An Enduring Voice

And then came the picture. I saw it on a platform and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, scarred but surviving, my name shown 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 debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but persisting.

I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else disappears. It is a subtle, stubborn rejection to be silenced.