Within those Bombed-Out Remains of an Residential Building, I Saw a Volume I’d Rendered

Among the wreckage of a collapsed structure, a particular sight stayed with me: a tome I had rendered from English to Farsi, resting partly concealed in dirt and ash. Its cover was torn and dirtied, its leaves curled and scorched, but it was still legible. Still communicating.

An Urban Center Amid Assault

Two days before, rockets started hitting the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, violent explosions. The internet was completely disconnected. I was in my residence, rendering a work about what it means to move language across languages, and the principles and concerns of occupying another’s narrative. As structures fell, I sat revising a text that contended, in its understated way, for the persistence of meaning.

Everything stopped. A book my publishing house had been about to go to print was stranded when the printing house closed. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, holding dictionaries, hard-to-find editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That library was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Grief

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure towns – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a image: in the background, a plant was burning, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to pursue them.

During those days, emotions passed over the city like a storm: instant fear, apprehension, indignation at the injustice, then apathy. Beyond the psychological cost, the shelling eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant queries and sources that translation demands.

Outside, shockwaves ripped windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every window was destroyed, the possessions lay damaged, objects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an easel, choosing not to let quiet and debris have the last word.

Transforming Sorrow

A photograph spread on social media of a young artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her poem went viral alongside her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between alleyways, yelling a name. People said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some repressed remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: turning destruction into art, death into lines, grief into quest.

Translation as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of ruin, I found myself rendering a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound 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 unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all yearned for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than literary craft: it was an act of perseverance, of remaining, of enduring.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his cell, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that linguistic work become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, goal, discipline, support, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked Voice

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, marked but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, stripped of life among the concrete and debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, 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 had significance”. 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 subtle, determined rejection to disappear.