Amid the Ruined Remains of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Book I Had Rendered

In the wreckage of a fallen apartment block, a particular sight lingered with me: a tome I had translated from English to Farsi, sitting partly concealed in dirt and soot. Its cover was shredded and stained, its leaves curled and singed, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

An Urban Center Amid Attack

Two days before, missiles began striking the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, violent explosions. The internet was completely severed. I was in my residence, rendering a book about what it means to move language across cultures, and the ethics and worries of taking on a different perspective. As buildings fell, I sat revising a text that contended, in its subtle way, for the endurance of meaning.

Everything stopped. A book my publishing house had been about to publish was stuck when the facility shut down. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, valuable editions 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.

Distance and Loss

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a photo: in the distance, a plant was burning, black smoke coiling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, moods moved through the city like a storm: instant terror, apprehension, righteous anger at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and materials that the craft demands.

Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the belongings lay damaged, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an stand, choosing not to let stillness and dirt have the ultimate victory.

Translating Grief

A photograph spread online of a young writer who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman dashing between alleyways, calling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: changing destruction into image, loss into verse, sorrow into search.

The Work as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by destruction, I found myself working on a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all yearned for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth pursuing.

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

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

A Scarred Legacy

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, marked but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, stripped of life among the debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but persisting.

I gazed upon 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 had significance”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a quiet, unyielding rejection to disappear.