Amid those Devastated Debris of an Residential Building, I Saw a Volume I Had Rendered

Among the rubble of a fallen structure, a solitary image stayed with me: a book I had rendered from English to Persian, lying half-buried in dirt and soot. Its front was torn and stained, its pages bent and singed, but it was still readable. Still speaking.

A City Amid Attack

Two days before, missiles commenced attacking the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, violent blasts. The web was completely cut off. I was in my residence, translating a book about what it means to carry words across languages, and the morals and worries of taking on someone else's voice. As buildings collapsed, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the persistence of significance.

Everything halted. A book my publishing house had been about to go to print was halted when the facility closed. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, filled with reference books, valuable editions 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 endure the night.

Separation and Devastation

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the background, a factory was ablaze, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and peril seemed to chase them.

During those days, emotions passed over the city like a front: sudden terror, anxiety, moral outrage at the injustice, then apathy. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and references that translation demands.

Outside, shockwaves ripped windows from their frames; at a relative's house, every window was broken, the furniture lay ruined, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, painting at an easel, declining to let silence and dirt have the final say.

Translating Pain

A photograph circulated online of a young writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman running between alleys, calling a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: turning ruin into picture, death into poetry, mourning into longing.

The Work as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by devastation, I found myself rendering a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all yearned for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than literary craft: it was an act of perseverance, of remaining, of holding on.

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 books, insisting that language study become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, aspiration, practice, foundation, and symbol” all at once.

An Enduring Work

And then came the photograph. I spotted it on a website and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, marked but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, stripped of life among the rubble and debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but persisting.

I looked 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 fire, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else disappears. It is a subtle, determined rejection to be silenced.