Within those Ruined Remains of an Apartment Block, I Found a Book I’d Translated

Among the debris of a destroyed building, a single vision remained with me: a book I had translated from English to Persian, lying partly concealed in dirt and ash. Its cover was ripped and dirtied, its leaves curled and scorched, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

A Metropolis During Assault

Two days earlier, rockets commenced attacking the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, forceful blasts. The internet was totally disconnected. I was in my apartment, working on a text about what it means to carry words across cultures, and the principles and worries of taking on another’s narrative. As edifices collapsed, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the persistence of meaning.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to publish was halted when the facility closed. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too close, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, stocked with lexicons, hard-to-find editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Devastation

My companion 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 photo: in the distance, a plant was on fire, dark smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to chase them.

During those days, emotions passed over the city like a storm: instant fear, anxiety, moral outrage at the unfairness, then numbness. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and sources that the craft demands.

Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every pane was destroyed, the possessions lay ruined, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, painting at an stand, declining to let silence and dust have the last word.

Transforming Pain

A image was shared online of a 23-year-old writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral next to her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an older woman running between alleyways, calling a name. People said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: transforming ruin into art, loss into poetry, mourning into quest.

The Craft as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself rendering a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet continued producing 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 beyond an art form: it was an act of defiance, of remaining, of persisting.

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 dictionaries, insisting that linguistic work become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, hope, practice, anchor, and analogy” all at once.

An Enduring Voice

And then came the photograph. I saw it on a platform and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, damaged but surviving, my name printed 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 ruins. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but enduring.

I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, 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 carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, unyielding refusal to be silenced.