Amid those Bombed-Out Remains of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Book I’d Translated

Among the rubble of a destroyed building, a single image remained with me: a tome I had rendered from the English language to Farsi, sitting partially covered in dirt and soot. Its cover was ripped and smudged, its leaves bent and burned, but it was still legible. Still uttering words.

A City During Bombardment

Two days earlier, missiles began striking the city. There were no warnings, just abrupt, forceful detonations. The internet was entirely disconnected. I was in my residence, working on a work about what it means to move language across tongues, and the morals and anxieties of occupying another’s perspective. As buildings collapsed, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the persistence of meaning.

Everything ceased. A book my publisher had been about to go to print was stuck when the facility closed. Shops closed 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 worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, filled with lexicons, rare volumes I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Separation and Grief

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be safer towns – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the distance, a industrial site was on fire, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to chase them.

During those days, feelings swept through the city like weather: sudden dread, anxiety, indignation at the injustice, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and references that translation demands.

Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every window was shattered, the belongings lay broken, household items scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an easel, choosing not to let quiet and debris have the ultimate victory.

Converting Grief

A picture spread online of a young poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an aged woman running between alleys, shouting a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

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

The Craft as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself translating a fable about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted working until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all yearned for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than literary craft: it was an act of resistance, of remaining, of enduring.

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 books, insisting that linguistic work become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, aspiration, rigor, support, and metaphor” all at once.

A Marked Work

And then came the picture. I saw it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, drained 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 visible – scarred, but enduring.

I gazed upon 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 fire, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a subtle, determined declination to vanish.