Amid the Devastated Debris of an Residential Building, I Found a Volume I Had Rendered

Within the rubble of a destroyed building, a particular vision stayed with me: a book I had rendered from English to Persian, sitting partially covered in dirt and ash. Its front was shredded and stained, its pages curled and scorched, but it was still legible. Still communicating.

A City Amid Assault

Two days prior, rockets commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, forceful blasts. The web was totally severed. I was in my flat, translating a work about what it means to move language across cultures, and the principles and anxieties of occupying someone else's perspective. As buildings collapsed, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its understated way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything halted. A project my publishing house had been about to publish was stuck when the printer ceased operations. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, stocked with lexicons, rare editions I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That library was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Dispersal and Loss

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a photo: in the distance, a plant was burning, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, emotions moved through the city like a front: swift fear, anxiety, righteous anger at the injustice, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate queries and sources that the craft demands.

Outside, concussive forces tore windows from their casings; at a cousin's house, every window was broken, the furniture lay damaged, objects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an easel, declining to let quiet and debris have the final say.

Converting Pain

A picture circulated digitally of a young poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an older woman hurrying between passages, yelling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: changing devastation into image, loss into lines, sorrow into quest.

The Craft as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself working on 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 lost his sight yet kept producing until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth striving for.

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond literary craft: it was an act of perseverance, of holding one's ground, of enduring.

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

A Scarred Legacy

And then came the image. I saw it on a website and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, scarred but intact, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the rubble and ruins. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but enduring.

I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else disappears. It is a subtle, determined refusal to be silenced.