Among those Bombed-Out Debris of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Book I Had Translated

Among the debris of a fallen building, a single image lingered with me: a volume I had converted from English to Farsi, lying partially covered in dirt and ash. Its front was shredded and smudged, its pages curled and singed, but it was still legible. Still speaking.

An Urban Center Under Bombardment

Two days prior, rockets commenced attacking the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, powerful detonations. The web was completely severed. I was in my apartment, translating a book about what it means to carry text across tongues, and the ethics and concerns of taking on someone else's perspective. As buildings fell, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the endurance of significance.

Everything stopped. A book my publishing house had been about to send to press was halted when the facility ceased operations. Retailers shut one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the bookshelves in my apartment, stocked with reference books, rare volumes 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 make it through the night.

Dispersal and Grief

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the background, a factory was on fire, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and threat seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings moved through the city like a storm: sudden dread, unease, moral outrage at the injustice, then apathy. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and sources that the craft demands.

Outside, shockwaves ripped windows from their frames; at a relative's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the belongings lay broken, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, working at an easel, choosing not to let quiet and dirt have the last word.

Translating Pain

A picture spread online of a young artist 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 aged woman running between alleys, calling a name. People said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: changing ruin into picture, demise into poetry, grief into search.

The Craft as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst ruin, I found myself translating a fable about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet continued working until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all longed for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than literary craft: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of enduring.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, goal, discipline, foundation, and metaphor” all at once.

A Marked Legacy

And then came the picture. I spotted it on a website and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, damaged but intact, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, drained 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 visible – scarred, but enduring.

I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under attack, 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 persist when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, unyielding refusal to vanish.