Among the Bombed-Out Debris of an Residential Building, I Found a Volume I’d Translated

In the rubble of a collapsed structure, a particular vision lingered with me: a tome I had converted from English to Farsi, resting partially covered in dirt and ash. Its front was ripped and dirtied, its leaves bent and burned, but it was still decipherable. Still communicating.

A Metropolis During Attack

Two days prior, missiles began striking the city. There were no alarms, just abrupt, violent explosions. The web was totally cut off. I was in my apartment, rendering a text about what it means to carry language across tongues, and the morals and concerns of inhabiting someone else's narrative. As buildings came down, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its subtle way, for the lasting nature of purpose.

Everything stopped. A project my publishing house had been about to go to print was stranded when the printer shut down. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop thinking about the shelves in my apartment, filled with lexicons, hard-to-find books I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Distance and Devastation

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer locations – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a photo: in the distance, a factory was ablaze, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to follow them.

During those days, moods swept through the city like weather: instant dread, unease, righteous anger at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant queries and references that translation demands.

Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their sashes; at a relative's house, every pane was broken, the belongings lay ruined, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an easel, refusing to let quiet and dirt have the final say.

Converting Sorrow

A image spread digitally of a 23-year-old writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman dashing between alleys, yelling a name. People said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried remembrance. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: turning destruction into picture, demise into poetry, sorrow into search.

The Work as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by ruin, I found myself translating a fable about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet kept working until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for.

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond a skill: it was an act of perseverance, of holding one's ground, of persisting.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his prison cell, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, aspiration, rigor, support, and analogy” all at once.

An Enduring Voice

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but intact, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, drained of life among the concrete and debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but enduring.

I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else disappears. It is a quiet, determined declination to be silenced.