Within the Ruined Debris of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Volume I’d Rendered

In the wreckage of a destroyed building, a single image lingered with me: a volume I had converted from the English language to Persian, lying partially covered in dust and ash. Its front was ripped and stained, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

A Metropolis Amid Assault

Two days prior, rockets started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, powerful explosions. The internet was totally disconnected. I was in my apartment, translating a work about what it means to transport language across languages, and the morals and concerns of taking on someone else's perspective. As structures came down, I sat editing a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the lasting nature of purpose.

Everything stopped. A project my publishing house had been about to send to press was stranded when the facility ceased operations. Retailers shut one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the bookshelves in my apartment, holding dictionaries, rare volumes I had spent years collecting 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.

Separation and Devastation

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure towns – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the faraway, a factory was ablaze, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, feelings moved through the city like a storm: instant fear, anxiety, indignation at the injustice, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and sources that translation demands.

Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every window was shattered, the furniture lay damaged, personal effects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an easel, refusing to let stillness and debris have the last word.

Translating Grief

A image spread on social media of a young artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman hurrying between alleys, yelling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some buried recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: changing ruin into image, loss into poetry, grief into longing.

Translation as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of destruction, I found myself rendering a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all desired – seemingly impossible, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond a skill: it was an act of perseverance, of staying put, of holding on.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, discipline, foundation, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked Voice

And then came the image. I spotted it on a news site and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, damaged but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, drained 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 visible – scarred, but enduring.

I gazed upon 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 carry stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else falls away. It is a persistent, determined rejection to disappear.