Amid those Ruined Remains of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Book I’d Rendered

In the debris of a destroyed building, a single sight remained with me: a tome I had translated from English to Farsi, sitting half-buried in dirt and ash. Its jacket was ripped and dirtied, its pages curled and singed, but it was still legible. Still communicating.

A Metropolis Under Attack

Two days earlier, rockets began striking the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, powerful explosions. The internet was totally disconnected. I was in my residence, working on a text about what it means to carry words across tongues, and the ethics and anxieties of taking on a different voice. As buildings came down, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the persistence of purpose.

Everything halted. A project my publisher had been about to send to press was halted when the printing house ceased operations. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the shelves in my apartment, stocked with reference books, rare books I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That collection was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Dispersal and Loss

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a image: in the background, a industrial site was on fire, dark smoke curling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings moved through the city like a storm: instant terror, unease, righteous anger at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and references that the craft demands.

Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every pane was broken, the belongings lay damaged, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, painting at an easel, declining to let stillness and dirt have the final say.

Transforming Pain

A image circulated on social media of a young writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman hurrying between alleys, shouting a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: changing devastation into art, death into verse, sorrow into search.

The Work as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself translating a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued working until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than a skill: it was an act of perseverance, of staying put, of holding on.

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

An Enduring Legacy

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

I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, determined refusal to vanish.