Within those Devastated Remains of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Book I Had Translated

In the rubble of a collapsed building, a particular vision lingered with me: a book I had converted from the English language to Persian, sitting partly concealed in dust and ash. Its jacket was shredded and dirtied, its leaves bent and singed, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

An Urban Center During Attack

Two days earlier, missiles began striking the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, forceful blasts. The internet was completely disconnected. I was in my flat, translating a book about what it means to move language across languages, and the ethics and worries of inhabiting a different perspective. As buildings fell, I sat revising a text that argued, in its subtle way, for the persistence of meaning.

Everything ceased. A project my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the printing house shut down. Retailers shut one by one. One night, when the booms 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, stocked with lexicons, hard-to-find volumes I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Dispersal and Loss

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer towns – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a image: in the background, a plant was burning, black smoke curling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, emotions moved through the city like a storm: swift dread, unease, righteous anger at the injustice, then numbness. Beyond the emotional toll, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate look-ups and references that the work demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their sashes; at a relative's house, every pane was shattered, the belongings lay damaged, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, working at an stand, choosing not to let stillness and dirt have the final say.

Transforming Pain

A picture spread on social media of a young poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her verse went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between alleys, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: changing ruin into image, death into verse, sorrow into longing.

The Work as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, I found myself translating a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet kept creating until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace 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 remaining, of holding on.

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, practice, anchor, and analogy” all at once.

A Scarred Voice

And then came the photograph. I saw it on a platform and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, damaged but intact, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained of life among the rubble and debris. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but surviving.

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 attack, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a persistent, unyielding rejection to be silenced.