Within those Bombed-Out Debris of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Volume I’d Rendered

Within the debris of a collapsed structure, a solitary vision remained with me: a volume I had converted from the English language to Farsi, lying partially covered in dust and soot. Its front was torn and smudged, its leaves curled and burned, but it was still readable. Still communicating.

An Urban Center During Bombardment

Two days prior, projectiles began striking the city. There were no alarms, just abrupt, powerful explosions. The internet was entirely severed. I was in my flat, translating a text about what it means to carry language across cultures, and the principles and anxieties of occupying another’s voice. As edifices collapsed, I sat editing a text that argued, in its understated way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything stopped. A project my publishing house had been about to publish was stranded when the printing house closed. Bookstores shut one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, holding reference books, valuable 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 endure the night.

Dispersal and Loss

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a picture: in the faraway, a industrial site was ablaze, thick smoke coiling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, emotions passed over the city like weather: instant fear, unease, indignation at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the emotional toll, the attack eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and references that the work demands.

Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their sashes; at a cousin's house, every pane was shattered, the possessions lay ruined, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an easel, refusing to let stillness and dust have the ultimate victory.

Translating Sorrow

A image circulated digitally of a young writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman hurrying between alleys, yelling a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some repressed recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: transforming devastation into image, loss into lines, sorrow into longing.

The Work as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, I found myself translating a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp 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 aiming at the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all longed for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of persisting.

One day, in full 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 linguistic work become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, aspiration, practice, foundation, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked Work

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a news site and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, marked but whole, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, stripped of life among the debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but enduring.

I stared 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 attack, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, determined rejection to vanish.