Among those Bombed-Out Remains of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Volume I Had Translated

Within the wreckage of a destroyed structure, a single image lingered with me: a volume I had rendered from English to Persian, resting partially covered in dust and ash. Its front was shredded and stained, its leaves bent and burned, but it was still legible. Still uttering words.

A Metropolis Under Bombardment

Two days before, projectiles commenced attacking the city. There were no warnings, just abrupt, powerful blasts. The web was completely severed. I was in my apartment, working on a work about what it means to transport text across languages, and the principles and worries of taking on someone else's narrative. As buildings came down, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its understated way, for the endurance of significance.

Everything halted. A project my publisher had been about to publish was halted when the printer ceased operations. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, holding lexicons, valuable 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 make it through the night.

Dispersal and Loss

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous locations – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a picture: in the faraway, a industrial site was ablaze, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to pursue them.

During those days, moods swept through the city like a storm: instant fear, unease, righteous anger at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate queries and sources that the work demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their frames; at a relative's house, every sheet of glass was destroyed, the furniture lay ruined, personal effects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an easel, refusing to let silence and dust have the last word.

Translating Sorrow

A picture spread digitally of a young poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between alleys, shouting a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated remembrance. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: changing ruin into picture, demise into poetry, sorrow into quest.

The Craft as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted working until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth pursuing.

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

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his prison cell, asking for more books, insisting that translation become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, discipline, anchor, and symbol” all at once.

A Scarred Legacy

And then came the image. I saw it on a news site and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, marked but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been black and white, devoid of life among the rubble and ruins. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but surviving.

I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else disappears. It is a subtle, determined declination to vanish.