Within the Devastated Debris of an Residential Building, I Found a Book I Had Translated

Within the rubble of a collapsed building, a solitary vision lingered with me: a tome I had translated from the English language to Persian, lying partially covered in dust and ash. Its cover was ripped and smudged, its leaves curled and scorched, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

A Metropolis During Bombardment

Two days prior, projectiles began striking the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, violent detonations. The internet was completely cut off. I was in my residence, translating a book about what it means to transport text across languages, and the principles and anxieties of inhabiting someone else's narrative. As edifices came down, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to publish was stuck when the printing house shut down. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, stocked with reference books, hard-to-find books I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Devastation

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a image: in the faraway, a industrial site was on fire, thick smoke coiling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings passed over the city like a front: swift dread, unease, indignation at the unfairness, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and sources that translation demands.

Outside, blast waves tore windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every window was shattered, the belongings lay ruined, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an stand, declining to let silence and dust have the final say.

Converting Grief

A picture was shared on social media of a 23-year-old poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman dashing between alleys, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: transforming destruction into art, demise into lines, grief into search.

The Craft as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth reaching toward.

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

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker 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, aspiration, practice, foundation, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked Voice

And then came the picture. I saw it on a platform and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, marked but intact, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, devoid of life among the debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but persisting.

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 fire, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a subtle, unyielding declination to disappear.