Within those Devastated Debris of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Book I Had Rendered

Within the rubble of a fallen structure, a particular vision stayed with me: a tome I had rendered from the English language to Persian, lying partially covered in dust and ash. Its cover was torn and dirtied, its pages curled and burned, but it was still legible. Still speaking.

A Metropolis During Assault

Two days before, projectiles commenced attacking the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, powerful blasts. The digital network was totally cut off. I was in my apartment, translating a book about what it means to move text across languages, and the ethics and worries of occupying another’s voice. As edifices came down, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the persistence of meaning.

Everything ceased. A project my publishing house had been about to go to print was halted when the facility closed. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the booms were too close, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the bookshelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, valuable editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That collection was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Separation and Loss

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a photo: in the faraway, a factory was burning, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and peril seemed to follow them.

During those days, emotions swept through the city like weather: sudden fear, apprehension, indignation at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and references that translation demands.

Outside, shockwaves ripped windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every pane was destroyed, the furniture lay ruined, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an easel, refusing to let stillness and dirt have the final say.

Translating Grief

A picture was shared online of a young artist who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman dashing between passages, calling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning destruction into picture, death into poetry, sorrow into quest.

The Work as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself rendering a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet kept 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 unattainable, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than a skill: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of holding on.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his cell, asking for more resources, insisting that language study become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, aspiration, practice, support, and analogy” all at once.

A Scarred Voice

And then came the photograph. I noticed it on a website and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, scarred but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the concrete and debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, 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 act with consequences”, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, stubborn declination to vanish.