Amid those Ruined Remains of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Volume I’d Rendered

Among the debris of a fallen structure, a single vision stayed with me: a book I had converted from the English language to Farsi, resting partially covered in dust and soot. Its jacket was ripped and smudged, its sheets bent and scorched, but it was still readable. Still speaking.

A City Under Attack

Two days before, missiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, forceful detonations. The internet was completely cut off. I was in my apartment, rendering a book about what it means to transport words across tongues, and the principles and worries of inhabiting a different narrative. As edifices collapsed, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of meaning.

Everything ceased. A manuscript my publisher had been about to go to print was stuck when the printing house closed. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop thinking about the bookshelves in my apartment, holding lexicons, rare volumes I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Distance and Grief

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a image: in the distance, a plant was on fire, dark smoke coiling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and threat seemed to chase them.

During those days, emotions moved through the city like weather: sudden terror, anxiety, moral outrage at the injustice, then numbness. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and sources that the craft demands.

Outside, shockwaves tore windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every pane was broken, the possessions lay damaged, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, working at an easel, choosing not to let silence and dust have the final say.

Converting Sorrow

A picture circulated online of a 23-year-old artist who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral next to her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an older woman dashing between alleys, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: turning devastation into art, death into lines, grief into longing.

Translation as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by destruction, 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 deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted working until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all yearned for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond an art form: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of holding on.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his confinement, asking for more books, insisting that linguistic work become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, aspiration, rigor, anchor, and symbol” all at once.

An Enduring Work

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 works, damaged but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been black and white, devoid of life among the debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but persisting.

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 complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, unyielding refusal to vanish.