Among the Bombed-Out Remains of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Book I’d Translated

Within the wreckage of a destroyed apartment block, a solitary image stayed with me: a volume I had rendered from the English language to Farsi, resting partially covered in dirt and ash. Its front was torn and stained, its leaves bent and burned, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

A Metropolis Under Bombardment

Two days before, rockets began striking the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, powerful detonations. The web was completely cut off. I was in my flat, working on a text about what it means to move words across cultures, and the principles and anxieties of taking on another’s narrative. As buildings collapsed, I sat revising a text that contended, in its understated way, for the endurance of meaning.

Everything ceased. A manuscript my publisher had been about to publish was stranded when the printer closed. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, stocked with lexicons, rare editions 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 survive the night.

Separation and Devastation

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous towns – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a picture: in the background, a plant was ablaze, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly far away, and peril seemed to chase them.

During those days, feelings moved through the city like weather: sudden fear, anxiety, indignation at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the personal impact, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and sources that the work demands.

Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their frames; at a relative's house, every pane was destroyed, the belongings lay broken, objects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an easel, choosing not to let silence and dust have the last word.

Translating Pain

A image spread online of a 23-year-old poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an elderly woman dashing between passages, yelling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some repressed recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: changing ruin into image, loss into lines, grief into longing.

The Work as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst ruin, I found myself translating a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for.

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than literary craft: it was an act of perseverance, of staying put, of persisting.

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that linguistic work become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, hope, rigor, support, and metaphor” all at once.

A Marked Work

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a website and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, marked but whole, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the concrete and debris. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – 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 persist when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, determined declination to be silenced.