Among the Devastated Remains of an Apartment Block, I Found a Book I Had Rendered

In the wreckage of a fallen building, a particular sight remained with me: a book I had translated from English to Farsi, lying half-buried in dust and ash. Its front was torn and dirtied, its pages bent and singed, but it was still readable. Still speaking.

A City Amid Assault

Two days earlier, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, powerful blasts. The web was completely severed. I was in my apartment, rendering a work about what it means to move words across cultures, and the principles and concerns of inhabiting someone else's narrative. As edifices came down, I sat revising a text that argued, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of meaning.

Everything stopped. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to go to print was stuck when the facility shut down. Retailers closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, holding dictionaries, rare volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Devastation

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be safer towns – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a picture: in the distance, a factory was burning, thick smoke coiling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and threat seemed to pursue them.

During those days, feelings passed over the city like a front: swift fear, unease, indignation at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and sources that translation demands.

Outside, shockwaves ripped windows from their sashes; at a cousin's house, every pane was shattered, the belongings lay broken, personal effects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an stand, choosing not to let quiet and dirt have the last word.

Converting Sorrow

A image was shared digitally of a 23-year-old writer who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared with her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman dashing between alleyways, calling a name. People said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning ruin into image, demise into verse, grief into search.

Translation as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of ruin, I found myself working on 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 significant meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all yearned for – 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 holding one's ground, of holding on.

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his prison cell, asking for more resources, insisting that translation become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, discipline, support, and analogy” all at once.

An Enduring Voice

And then came the image. I noticed it on a website and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, scarred but surviving, 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 concrete and ruins. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but surviving.

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 mattered”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else falls away. It is a subtle, determined rejection to be silenced.