Within those Bombed-Out Debris of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Book I Had Rendered

Within the rubble of a destroyed structure, a particular sight remained with me: a volume I had translated from the English language to Persian, sitting partially covered in dust and ash. Its cover was shredded and dirtied, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still readable. Still communicating.

A City During Assault

Two days prior, rockets began striking the city. There were no warnings, just abrupt, forceful detonations. The internet was totally disconnected. I was in my apartment, working on a text about what it means to move words across tongues, and the ethics and worries of taking on a different perspective. As buildings collapsed, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the lasting nature of significance.

Everything stopped. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to publish was stranded when the facility closed. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the booms were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, stocked with dictionaries, valuable books I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That collection was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Separation and Grief

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure towns – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a photo: in the faraway, a industrial site was burning, black smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings swept through the city like weather: sudden terror, unease, righteous anger at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and sources that translation demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every pane was broken, the furniture lay damaged, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, painting at an stand, choosing not to let stillness and debris have the ultimate victory.

Translating Grief

A photograph spread on social media of a young poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an older woman running between alleys, yelling a name. People said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated memory. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: transforming devastation into art, demise into verse, mourning into longing.

The Craft as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by ruin, I found myself working on a fable about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can possess 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 striving for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond literary craft: it was an act of perseverance, of remaining, 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 linguistic work become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, hope, discipline, foundation, and metaphor” all at once.

A Marked Voice

And then came the image. I noticed it on a website and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, damaged but intact, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been black and white, stripped of life among the debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but enduring.

I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, unyielding rejection to be silenced.