Among those Ruined Remains of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Book I’d Translated

Within the rubble of a fallen building, a particular image remained with me: a book I had translated from the English language to Persian, lying half-buried in dust and soot. Its jacket was torn and dirtied, its sheets bent and burned, but it was still readable. Still communicating.

An Urban Center Under Attack

Two days prior, projectiles commenced attacking the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, powerful explosions. The internet was totally disconnected. I was in my flat, working on a book about what it means to move text across cultures, and the morals and worries of occupying another’s narrative. As edifices came down, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its understated way, for the persistence of purpose.

Everything halted. A project my publishing house had been about to go to print was stranded when the printing house closed. Bookstores shut one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the bookshelves in my apartment, holding lexicons, hard-to-find editions I had spent years gathering 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 survive the night.

Dispersal and Grief

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous towns – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a picture: in the background, a plant was on fire, black smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and threat seemed to pursue them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like a front: instant terror, unease, moral outrage at the injustice, then apathy. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant queries and sources that translation demands.

Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their sashes; at a cousin's house, every pane was broken, the furniture lay damaged, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, working at an easel, choosing not to let silence and debris have the final say.

Translating Sorrow

A image circulated on social media of a young poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared next to her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an older woman dashing between alleyways, shouting a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a conflict 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 translating, in our own way: turning devastation into picture, demise into lines, mourning into search.

The Craft as Persistence

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 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 persisted working until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all yearned for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing.

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

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

An Enduring Legacy

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

I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else disappears. It is a persistent, stubborn rejection to disappear.