Amid those Bombed-Out Remains of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Book I Had Translated

Among the wreckage of a fallen apartment block, a solitary sight remained with me: a book I had translated from English to Persian, sitting half-buried in dirt and ash. Its jacket was shredded and stained, its sheets curled and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking.

A Metropolis During Bombardment

Two days earlier, rockets started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, violent detonations. The web was completely cut off. I was in my residence, rendering a book about what it means to transport text across cultures, and the ethics and worries of taking on someone else's perspective. As edifices came down, I sat editing a text that contended, in its subtle way, for the lasting nature of purpose.

Everything halted. A project my publisher had been about to go to print was halted when the printing house shut down. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, filled with lexicons, rare books 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 survive the night.

Dispersal and Loss

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be safer locations – 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 industrial site was burning, black smoke coiling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and peril seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods moved through the city like a front: sudden terror, anxiety, moral outrage at the injustice, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, 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, blast waves tore windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every pane was shattered, the belongings lay ruined, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an stand, choosing not to let silence and debris have the last word.

Converting Grief

A photograph spread digitally of a 23-year-old artist who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an aged woman dashing between passages, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated remembrance. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: transforming ruin into art, loss into lines, grief into longing.

Translation as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself translating a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost 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 tranquility we all desired – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth striving for.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than a skill: it was an act of perseverance, of staying put, of persisting.

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

A Marked Legacy

And then came the photograph. I saw it on a platform 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 color, but it might as well have been black and white, devoid of life among the rubble and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but enduring.

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 true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, unyielding refusal to disappear.