Among those Devastated Remains of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Book I’d Rendered

Among the rubble of a fallen building, a solitary vision remained with me: a book I had converted from English to Farsi, lying partly concealed in dirt and soot. Its cover was torn and stained, its pages curled and singed, but it was still readable. Still communicating.

A Metropolis Under Bombardment

Two days earlier, rockets began striking the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, violent blasts. The digital network was totally disconnected. I was in my flat, translating a text about what it means to carry text across cultures, and the ethics and worries of inhabiting another’s perspective. As edifices came down, I sat editing a text that argued, in its understated way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything ceased. A project my publisher had been about to publish was stuck when the printer ceased operations. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too close, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop thinking about the bookshelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, valuable volumes 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.

Distance and Devastation

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the background, a factory was on fire, thick smoke coiling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like a front: swift terror, anxiety, indignation at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and sources that the work demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every window was shattered, the possessions lay damaged, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, creating at an easel, declining to let stillness and dirt have the final say.

Translating Grief

A image spread on social media of a young writer who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral alongside her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman hurrying between alleys, shouting a name. People said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some repressed memory. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: transforming ruin into image, loss into lines, mourning into quest.

The Work as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of destruction, I found myself translating a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet continued working until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly impossible, yet still worth reaching toward.

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

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

A Scarred Voice

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

I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, 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 obliterated. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, unyielding rejection to vanish.