Within those Ruined Remains of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Volume I Had Translated

Among the debris of a destroyed structure, a solitary sight remained with me: a tome I had rendered from the English language to Persian, sitting partially covered in dust and ash. Its cover was shredded and stained, its leaves curled and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still uttering words.

A Metropolis Under Bombardment

Two days before, missiles commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, forceful blasts. The internet was entirely cut off. I was in my apartment, translating a work about what it means to move text across cultures, and the ethics and anxieties of inhabiting another’s perspective. As edifices fell, I sat editing a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the lasting nature of meaning.

Everything ceased. A project my publisher had been about to publish was stuck when the printer ceased operations. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop thinking about the bookshelves in my apartment, stocked with reference books, valuable editions I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through 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 targeted. My daughter travelled 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 coiling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods swept through the city like weather: instant dread, apprehension, moral outrage at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and sources that translation demands.

Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their casings; at a cousin's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the belongings lay broken, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an stand, refusing to let quiet and dirt have the last word.

Converting Pain

A picture spread digitally of a young writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went viral next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an older woman hurrying between alleys, yelling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated memory. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: changing devastation into image, demise into poetry, grief into search.

Translation as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself working on a fable about a king whose daughter will get better 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 kept producing until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing.

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

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

A Scarred Legacy

And then came the photograph. I noticed it on a news site and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, scarred but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, stripped of life among the rubble and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but surviving.

I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a act with consequences”, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else falls away. It is a persistent, unyielding refusal to be silenced.