Among the Bombed-Out Debris of an Apartment Block, I Found a Volume I’d Rendered

In the rubble of a fallen apartment block, a particular vision lingered with me: a book I had converted from the English language to Persian, sitting partly concealed in dirt and ash. Its front was ripped and dirtied, its pages bent and singed, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

An Urban Center Under Assault

Two days earlier, missiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, powerful detonations. The internet was completely disconnected. I was in my apartment, working on a text about what it means to transport words across cultures, and the morals and concerns of inhabiting another’s narrative. As structures fell, I sat editing a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything ceased. A project my publishing house had been about to go to print was stuck when the facility shut down. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the bookshelves in my apartment, holding lexicons, valuable books I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Grief

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous towns – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a photo: in the background, a industrial site was burning, black smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings moved through the city like weather: sudden dread, apprehension, moral outrage at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and references that translation demands.

Outside, concussive forces tore windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the furniture lay ruined, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an easel, refusing to let quiet and dust have the final say.

Translating Sorrow

A image circulated digitally of a young artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral next to her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman running between alleys, calling a name. People said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some repressed recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: changing ruin into picture, death into verse, sorrow into quest.

The Craft as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by ruin, 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 experienced the loss of his sight yet continued creating until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of perseverance, of holding one's ground, of holding on.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his cell, asking for more resources, insisting that language study become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, aspiration, practice, anchor, and analogy” all at once.

A Marked Voice

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

I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a quiet, unyielding rejection to vanish.