Amid the Devastated Debris of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Volume I’d Rendered

In the debris of a fallen structure, a particular image stayed with me: a volume I had rendered from English to Persian, sitting partly concealed in dirt and ash. Its cover was ripped and dirtied, its leaves curled and scorched, but it was still readable. Still communicating.

A City During Bombardment

Two days earlier, rockets began striking the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, forceful blasts. The web was totally disconnected. I was in my flat, rendering a work about what it means to move language across cultures, and the ethics and concerns of taking on a different perspective. As edifices fell, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its subtle way, for the lasting nature of purpose.

Everything stopped. A project my publishing house had been about to send to press was halted when the facility closed. Bookstores shut 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 worrying about the library in my apartment, holding reference books, rare books I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Separation and Loss

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer locations – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the distance, a factory was on fire, dark smoke curling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to follow them.

During those days, emotions swept through the city like a front: swift dread, apprehension, moral outrage at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and references that the craft demands.

Outside, blast waves tore windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every pane was broken, the belongings lay damaged, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, creating at an stand, declining to let silence and debris have the ultimate victory.

Translating Pain

A photograph circulated online of a 23-year-old artist who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her verse went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an older woman running between alleys, calling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some deep-seated recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: changing devastation into picture, demise into verse, mourning into search.

Translation as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst ruin, I found myself rendering a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can hold 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 reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all desired – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth striving for.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than a skill: it was an act of defiance, of staying put, of enduring.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more books, insisting that translation become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, goal, practice, support, and metaphor” all at once.

An Enduring Voice

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a news site and saw that, amid 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, drained 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 apparent – scarred, but enduring.

I looked 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 attack, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, stubborn rejection to disappear.