Within those Ruined Debris of an Apartment Block, I Found a Volume I Had Translated

Among the rubble of a fallen apartment block, a particular vision stayed with me: a tome I had translated from English to Farsi, lying half-buried in dirt and soot. Its front was torn and stained, its sheets bent and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking.

An Urban Center Under Attack

Two days prior, rockets commenced attacking the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, powerful detonations. The digital network was entirely severed. I was in my apartment, rendering a text about what it means to transport words across cultures, and the ethics and anxieties of inhabiting another’s narrative. As structures fell, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the endurance of significance.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to go to print was stranded when the printing house ceased operations. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the bookshelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, rare volumes I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That collection was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Separation and Grief

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be safer locations – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a image: in the distance, a plant was on fire, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and threat seemed to chase them.

During those days, feelings passed over the city like weather: instant fear, apprehension, righteous anger at the injustice, then numbness. Beyond the psychological cost, the shelling destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and references that the craft demands.

Outside, concussive forces tore windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every sheet of glass was destroyed, the possessions lay broken, objects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an easel, choosing not to let stillness and debris have the last word.

Converting Pain

A photograph was shared on social media of a young poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an older woman hurrying between alleys, yelling a name. People said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some repressed remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: transforming destruction into picture, demise into lines, sorrow into longing.

Translation as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself translating a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep 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 unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader 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, aspiration, rigor, anchor, and analogy” all at once.

A Scarred Voice

And then came the image. I spotted it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, damaged but intact, my name shown on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, stripped of life among the rubble and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but surviving.

I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice had significance”. 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 persistent, determined refusal to vanish.