Among those Bombed-Out Remains of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Volume I Had Rendered

Among the debris of a destroyed apartment block, a particular vision stayed with me: a volume I had rendered from English to Persian, sitting partly concealed in dirt and ash. Its front was torn and stained, its sheets curled and burned, but it was still readable. Still speaking.

A Metropolis Amid Bombardment

Two days before, missiles started hitting the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, forceful detonations. The digital network was completely cut off. I was in my residence, translating a book about what it means to transport words across languages, and the ethics and worries of taking on someone else's perspective. As edifices collapsed, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything stopped. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to go to print was halted when the facility shut down. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, rare editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That collection was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Separation and Devastation

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a photo: in the faraway, a industrial site was on fire, black smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, feelings moved through the city like a front: swift dread, apprehension, moral outrage at the unfairness, then numbness. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant searches and references that the work demands.

Outside, blast waves tore windows from their frames; at a relative's house, every pane was destroyed, the possessions lay ruined, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, working at an easel, declining to let stillness and dust have the final say.

Converting Grief

A photograph circulated on social media of a young poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her verse went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman running between alleyways, shouting a name. People said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning destruction into image, demise into verse, sorrow into longing.

Translation as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of destruction, I found myself rendering a children’s tale 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 persisted working until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all yearned for – seemingly impossible, 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 staying put, of enduring.

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

An Enduring Voice

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

I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, determined declination to disappear.