Among those Ruined Debris of an Apartment Block, I Found a Volume I Had Translated

In the wreckage of a fallen apartment block, a single vision remained with me: a tome I had translated from English to Farsi, lying half-buried in dirt and soot. Its cover was shredded and dirtied, its leaves curled and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking.

An Urban Center Under Attack

Two days prior, projectiles began striking the city. There were no alarms, just abrupt, powerful explosions. The internet was completely cut off. I was in my residence, working on a text about what it means to transport words across languages, and the morals and worries of occupying someone else's narrative. As structures fell, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the persistence of significance.

Everything ceased. A book my publisher had been about to go to print was halted when the printing house closed. Retailers closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, stocked with dictionaries, rare editions I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That collection was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Separation and Loss

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a picture: in the distance, a factory was ablaze, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to pursue them.

During those days, feelings moved through the city like weather: swift dread, apprehension, moral outrage at the injustice, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the attack eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and materials that the craft demands.

Outside, shockwaves tore windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every window was destroyed, the belongings lay broken, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an stand, choosing not to let silence and dust have the last word.

Transforming Sorrow

A image was shared online of a 23-year-old writer who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman hurrying between passages, calling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some repressed memory. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: transforming ruin into image, loss into lines, mourning into quest.

The Craft as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst ruin, I found myself working on a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will recover 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 continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of defiance, of remaining, of persisting.

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 dictionaries, insisting that linguistic work become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, rigor, foundation, and analogy” all at once.

An Enduring Voice

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

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 true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else falls away. It is a persistent, stubborn refusal to disappear.