Amid those Ruined Debris of an Residential Building, I Found a Book I Had Translated

Within the rubble of a fallen structure, a single sight remained with me: a volume I had converted from the English language to Persian, resting partially covered in dirt and soot. Its front was shredded and stained, its sheets curled and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking.

A Metropolis Amid Bombardment

Two days earlier, rockets began striking the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, forceful detonations. The web was completely cut off. I was in my apartment, translating a book about what it means to carry language across cultures, and the principles and worries of taking on a different perspective. As buildings fell, I sat revising a text that contended, in its understated way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything ceased. A manuscript my publisher had been about to send to press was stranded when the printer shut down. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, rare books I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Separation and Devastation

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a photo: in the distance, a plant was burning, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, emotions moved through the city like a storm: sudden dread, apprehension, moral outrage at the injustice, then apathy. Beyond the personal impact, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant queries and materials that the work demands.

Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every pane was destroyed, the possessions lay broken, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an easel, choosing not to let silence and dust have the ultimate victory.

Converting Grief

A photograph was shared online of a young poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared with her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman dashing between alleys, yelling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some buried remembrance. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: changing destruction into art, demise into lines, grief into search.

The Craft as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself translating a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can hold 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 reaching for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all yearned for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than literary craft: it was an act of defiance, of remaining, of persisting.

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that linguistic work become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, aspiration, practice, support, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked Work

And then came the image. I spotted it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, marked but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, drained of life among the concrete and ruins. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – 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 true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, unyielding refusal to vanish.