Within the Devastated Remains of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Book I’d Translated

Within the debris of a destroyed structure, a solitary vision remained with me: a volume I had converted from the English language to Farsi, lying half-buried in dust and ash. Its jacket was torn and dirtied, its sheets curled and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still uttering words.

An Urban Center Under Assault

Two days earlier, rockets started hitting the city. There were no alarms, just unexpected, violent blasts. The internet was entirely disconnected. I was in my residence, translating a text about what it means to transport language across languages, and the ethics and concerns of inhabiting someone else's narrative. As structures collapsed, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the persistence of significance.

Everything ceased. A manuscript my publisher had been about to send to press was stranded when the printer shut down. Bookstores closed one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, holding dictionaries, valuable books I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That library was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Distance and Devastation

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous towns – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a photo: in the faraway, a plant was ablaze, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to follow them.

During those days, moods swept through the city like a front: sudden dread, apprehension, indignation at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant searches and materials that the work demands.

Outside, concussive forces tore windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every window was destroyed, the belongings lay ruined, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an stand, declining to let quiet and dirt have the final say.

Translating Grief

A image spread on social media of a young artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her poem went spread rapidly with her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman running between alleys, shouting a name. People said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried remembrance. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning devastation into picture, demise into lines, grief into longing.

Translation as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst ruin, I found myself rendering a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet persisted creating until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all yearned for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his confinement, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, aspiration, practice, support, and symbol” all at once.

An Enduring Work

And then came the photograph. I spotted it on a platform and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, damaged but intact, 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 debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but enduring.

I stared 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 attack, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, determined declination to vanish.