Among those Devastated Remains of an Residential Building, I Saw a Book I’d Rendered

Within the debris of a destroyed structure, a solitary image stayed with me: a book I had translated from the English language to Farsi, lying partly concealed in dirt and ash. Its front was torn and smudged, its sheets curled and singed, but it was still legible. Still speaking.

A Metropolis Amid Attack

Two days before, missiles began striking the city. There were no warnings, just abrupt, powerful explosions. The digital network was completely disconnected. I was in my flat, translating a work about what it means to move text across languages, and the ethics and worries of occupying a different perspective. As edifices fell, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its understated way, for the persistence of purpose.

Everything stopped. A book my publishing house had been about to publish was stranded when the printing house ceased operations. Retailers closed one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, holding dictionaries, rare editions 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.

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 travelled to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the distance, a industrial site was burning, black smoke coiling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to chase them.

During those days, feelings moved through the city like weather: instant dread, unease, indignation at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the attack destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and references that the craft demands.

Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every pane was broken, the belongings lay ruined, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an easel, choosing not to let silence and debris have the final say.

Translating Sorrow

A image was shared on social media of a young artist who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman dashing between alleys, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated remembrance. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning ruin into picture, loss into lines, sorrow into quest.

Translation as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of destruction, I found myself translating a fable about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet kept producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher 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 reality, aspiration, practice, anchor, and symbol” all at once.

A Scarred Work

And then came the picture. I saw it on a news site and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, damaged but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, drained of life among the debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been unseen, 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 act with consequences”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under fire, 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 persist when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, unyielding rejection to disappear.