Within those Bombed-Out Debris of an Apartment Block, I Found a Book I’d Translated

In the wreckage of a fallen building, a particular sight lingered with me: a book I had rendered from the English language to Persian, sitting half-buried in dust and soot. Its jacket was torn and stained, its leaves bent and burned, but it was still decipherable. Still communicating.

A City Amid Assault

Two days prior, missiles commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, powerful detonations. The web was entirely cut off. I was in my flat, translating a book about what it means to move words across languages, and the morals and anxieties of occupying a different perspective. As buildings collapsed, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything ceased. A project my publishing house had been about to publish was stuck when the printing house shut down. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the shelves in my apartment, holding dictionaries, rare volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Distance and Grief

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a photo: in the faraway, a factory was burning, dark smoke curling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and peril seemed to pursue them.

During those days, feelings moved through the city like weather: instant fear, anxiety, moral outrage at the unfairness, then numbness. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate look-ups and references that the work demands.

Outside, shockwaves ripped windows from their casings; at a cousin's house, every sheet of glass was broken, the furniture lay damaged, objects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an stand, choosing not to let silence and dust have the ultimate victory.

Transforming Pain

A photograph was shared on social media of a young poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went viral alongside her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman dashing between alleyways, shouting a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: changing ruin into art, demise into lines, mourning into search.

The Work as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will get better 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 persisted creating until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: 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 philosopher in his prison cell, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that linguistic work become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, hope, practice, anchor, and analogy” all at once.

A Scarred Work

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

I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the true gravity 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 haul stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a quiet, determined declination to vanish.