Among those Ruined Remains of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Book I Had Translated

Within the wreckage of a destroyed apartment block, a particular sight remained with me: a tome I had converted from English to Persian, sitting partially covered in dust and ash. Its jacket was shredded and stained, its leaves curled and singed, but it was still legible. Still uttering words.

An Urban Center Under Bombardment

Two days before, rockets began striking the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, forceful explosions. The internet was totally disconnected. I was in my residence, rendering a text about what it means to move text across tongues, and the principles and concerns of occupying another’s voice. As buildings came down, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the endurance of significance.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to send to press was stuck when the printing house closed. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, holding lexicons, hard-to-find books I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Dispersal and Devastation

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous areas – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the faraway, a plant was on fire, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to pursue them.

During those days, emotions swept through the city like a storm: instant terror, unease, moral outrage at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant searches and materials that the work demands.

Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their casings; at a cousin's house, every pane was destroyed, the possessions lay damaged, objects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an easel, choosing not to let stillness and debris have the ultimate victory.

Transforming Grief

A image spread digitally of a young writer who was died 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 passages, calling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war 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 translating, in our own way: changing destruction into picture, death into lines, mourning into search.

The Work as Resistance

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 heal only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted working until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth reaching toward.

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

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that translation become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, aspiration, practice, foundation, and metaphor” all at once.

A Scarred Voice

And then came the picture. I saw it on a news site and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, marked but intact, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, stripped 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 apparent – scarred, but surviving.

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 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 endure when everything else falls away. It is a subtle, unyielding declination to be silenced.