Among those Bombed-Out Remains of an Residential Building, I Found a Volume I’d Translated

In the wreckage of a destroyed structure, a particular vision remained with me: a volume I had translated from English to Farsi, sitting half-buried in dust and soot. Its cover was torn and stained, its sheets curled and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still uttering words.

A Metropolis During Bombardment

Two days before, rockets began striking the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, violent blasts. The digital network was entirely disconnected. I was in my apartment, translating a book about what it means to transport text across tongues, and the principles and concerns of occupying a different perspective. As edifices came down, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the persistence of significance.

Everything stopped. A book my publisher had been about to publish was halted when the printer ceased operations. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop thinking about the shelves in my apartment, holding reference books, hard-to-find volumes I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Loss

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the faraway, a plant was ablaze, thick smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to pursue them.

During those days, emotions passed over the city like a front: swift terror, apprehension, moral outrage at the injustice, then apathy. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and references that translation demands.

Outside, shockwaves ripped windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every window was destroyed, the possessions lay damaged, household items scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an easel, declining to let silence and dirt have the final say.

Converting Pain

A photograph was shared online of a 23-year-old writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral alongside her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between passages, shouting a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some repressed remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

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

The Work as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by destruction, I found myself translating a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal 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 persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all yearned for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than literary craft: it was an act of defiance, of staying put, of enduring.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker 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 reality, goal, rigor, anchor, and symbol” all at once.

A Scarred Voice

And then came the photograph. I saw it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, damaged but whole, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, stripped of life among the concrete and ruins. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but enduring.

I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a act with consequences”, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else disappears. It is a subtle, determined refusal to disappear.