Amid the Devastated Debris of an Residential Building, I Found a Book I’d Translated

Among the rubble of a collapsed building, a particular vision remained with me: a book I had translated from the English language to Farsi, resting half-buried in dust and soot. Its cover was ripped and stained, its leaves bent and burned, but it was still legible. Still communicating.

An Urban Center Amid Assault

Two days before, rockets started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, violent explosions. The internet was completely cut off. I was in my flat, working on a text about what it means to transport text across tongues, and the morals and worries of taking on someone else's perspective. As structures came down, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the lasting nature of purpose.

Everything ceased. A book my publishing house had been about to send to press was stuck when the printing house shut down. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, stocked with lexicons, valuable volumes I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Devastation

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure towns – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a image: in the background, a plant was burning, thick smoke curling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, feelings passed over the city like a front: instant dread, apprehension, indignation at the unfairness, then numbness. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and materials that translation demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every sheet of glass was broken, the furniture lay ruined, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an easel, choosing not to let quiet and dirt have the ultimate victory.

Transforming Sorrow

A photograph circulated on social media of a 23-year-old writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral alongside her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman hurrying between alleyways, calling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated memory. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: changing destruction into art, loss into poetry, mourning into quest.

The Work as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst ruin, 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 significant meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet kept producing until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of resistance, 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 cell, asking for more resources, insisting that linguistic work become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, goal, discipline, support, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked Voice

And then came the photograph. I spotted it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, damaged but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, stripped of life among the concrete and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but persisting.

I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the full weight 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 persist when everything else falls away. It is a subtle, unyielding rejection to vanish.