Among those Devastated Remains of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Book I Had Translated

In the rubble of a destroyed building, a particular sight remained with me: a tome I had translated from English to Farsi, sitting half-buried in dust and ash. Its front was torn and stained, its sheets bent and burned, but it was still legible. Still uttering words.

A City Amid Attack

Two days prior, projectiles began striking the city. There were no alarms, just unexpected, powerful explosions. The web was completely severed. I was in my apartment, rendering a book about what it means to carry words across cultures, and the principles and concerns of inhabiting another’s perspective. As structures fell, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the persistence of purpose.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to send to press was stuck when the printer ceased operations. Bookstores shut one by one. One night, when the explosions were too close, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the shelves in my apartment, holding dictionaries, rare editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my lifework, 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 locations – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a image: in the background, a plant was on fire, black smoke curling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like weather: sudden fear, anxiety, moral outrage at the injustice, then numbness. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and materials that the craft demands.

Outside, shockwaves tore windows from their frames; at a relative's house, every pane was broken, the possessions lay ruined, objects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an stand, declining to let quiet and dust have the ultimate victory.

Transforming Grief

A image was shared on social media of a young writer who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an older woman running between passages, calling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: changing destruction into image, demise into poetry, mourning into longing.

The Craft as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself working on a story for young readers 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 continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of perseverance, of remaining, of holding on.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his prison cell, asking for more resources, insisting that linguistic work become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, hope, discipline, support, and analogy” all at once.

An Enduring Work

And then came the image. I spotted it on a website and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, damaged but intact, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been monochrome, 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 persisting.

I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a persistent, unyielding rejection to vanish.