Within the Ruined Debris of an Residential Building, I Saw a Book I Had Translated

Within the rubble of a destroyed building, a solitary vision remained with me: a book I had rendered from English to Persian, resting half-buried in dust and ash. Its cover was torn and stained, its sheets curled and singed, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

An Urban Center During Bombardment

Two days prior, projectiles commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, forceful explosions. The internet was entirely severed. I was in my residence, working on a work about what it means to carry text across cultures, and the morals and worries of taking on a different perspective. As structures came down, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the endurance of significance.

Everything stopped. A manuscript my publisher had been about to go to print was stuck when the printing house shut down. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, holding reference books, hard-to-find editions I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Separation and Loss

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the background, a industrial site was ablaze, thick smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and threat seemed to chase them.

During those days, emotions passed over the city like a front: instant terror, anxiety, moral outrage at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and references that translation demands.

Outside, blast waves tore windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every sheet of glass was destroyed, the possessions lay broken, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an stand, choosing not to let silence and debris have the last word.

Converting Sorrow

A image circulated on social media of a 23-year-old writer who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared with her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an older woman running between alleys, shouting a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: turning devastation into image, loss into verse, sorrow into quest.

Translation as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of ruin, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for.

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond an art form: it was an act of perseverance, of remaining, of persisting.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a facility; 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, aspiration, discipline, anchor, and metaphor” all at once.

An Enduring Work

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

I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a act with consequences”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a persistent, determined declination to disappear.