Amid those Devastated Remains of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Book I’d Rendered

Among the wreckage of a fallen building, a single image remained with me: a volume I had translated from the English language to Farsi, sitting partially covered in dirt and soot. Its front was torn and dirtied, its pages bent and scorched, but it was still legible. Still speaking.

A Metropolis During Bombardment

Two days before, rockets commenced attacking the city. There were no warnings, just abrupt, violent explosions. The internet was entirely disconnected. I was in my apartment, translating a text about what it means to carry words across languages, and the principles and concerns of taking on a different narrative. As buildings came down, I sat revising a text that argued, in its subtle way, for the endurance of meaning.

Everything ceased. A project my publishing house had been about to send to press was stranded when the printer closed. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the blasts were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, stocked with reference books, valuable volumes I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my career's work, 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 targeted. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a photo: in the distance, a plant was on fire, dark smoke curling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and peril seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods swept through the city like weather: swift fear, unease, moral outrage at the unfairness, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the attack eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and sources that translation demands.

Outside, shockwaves blew windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every pane was broken, the possessions lay broken, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an easel, declining to let silence and dirt have the ultimate victory.

Converting Sorrow

A image spread online of a 23-year-old writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman dashing between passages, shouting a name. People said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: changing ruin into art, death into lines, grief into longing.

The Craft as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by ruin, I found myself working on a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will recover 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 continued working until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly impossible, yet still worth pursuing.

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

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker 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 fact, aspiration, practice, foundation, and analogy” all at once.

An Enduring Voice

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a website and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, marked but whole, 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 debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – 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 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 endure when everything else falls away. It is a quiet, unyielding refusal to be silenced.