Amid those Ruined Debris of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Book I Had Rendered

In the debris of a destroyed building, a particular image lingered with me: a tome I had rendered from the English language to Farsi, sitting partly concealed in dust and ash. Its cover was shredded and dirtied, its sheets bent and burned, but it was still legible. Still communicating.

A City Under Bombardment

Two days prior, rockets commenced attacking the city. There were no warnings, just abrupt, powerful explosions. The digital network was completely disconnected. I was in my flat, working on a text about what it means to carry language across languages, and the principles and concerns of occupying a different narrative. As structures collapsed, I sat revising a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the endurance of meaning.

Everything stopped. A manuscript my publisher had been about to send to press was halted when the printing house ceased operations. Retailers shut one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop thinking about the bookshelves in my apartment, filled with reference books, rare editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Distance and Loss

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous towns – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a photo: in the distance, a factory was ablaze, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings passed over the city like weather: instant terror, unease, moral outrage at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and references that the work demands.

Outside, shockwaves tore windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every pane was broken, the possessions lay broken, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an easel, choosing not to let stillness and debris have the ultimate victory.

Translating Grief

A photograph spread on social media of a 23-year-old writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman running between alleys, shouting a name. People said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some buried recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: changing devastation into image, demise into verse, grief into quest.

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 recover only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant 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 calm we all desired – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than a skill: it was an act of resistance, of staying put, of persisting.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his prison cell, asking for more books, insisting that linguistic work become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, discipline, foundation, and analogy” all at once.

An Enduring Legacy

And then came the photograph. I spotted it on a website and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, marked but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, devoid of life among the rubble and ruins. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but enduring.

I stared at 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 bombardment, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, stubborn rejection to be silenced.