Among the Bombed-Out Debris of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Volume I Had Translated

In the wreckage of a collapsed structure, a solitary vision remained with me: a tome I had translated from the English language to Persian, resting partially covered in dust and soot. Its jacket was ripped and dirtied, its sheets bent and burned, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

A Metropolis Under Attack

Two days prior, rockets began striking the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, powerful blasts. The internet was completely disconnected. I was in my apartment, translating a work about what it means to carry language across languages, and the ethics and concerns of taking on another’s narrative. As edifices fell, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its subtle way, for the persistence of purpose.

Everything ceased. A manuscript my publisher had been about to publish was stranded when the facility ceased operations. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, holding dictionaries, valuable editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Separation and Devastation

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous locations – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a picture: in the background, a plant was ablaze, black smoke coiling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like weather: instant fear, unease, righteous anger at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and materials that the work demands.

Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their sashes; at a relative's house, every pane was broken, the belongings lay damaged, objects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an stand, choosing not to let silence and debris have the ultimate victory.

Converting Sorrow

A photograph spread online of a young artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her poem went viral alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an older woman running between passages, shouting a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated remembrance. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: turning destruction into image, demise into verse, sorrow into search.

The Craft as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by devastation, I found myself working on a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant 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 impossible. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for.

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

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

A Marked Voice

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 translations, scarred but intact, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, stripped of life among the rubble and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but enduring.

I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a act with consequences”, 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 erased. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, unyielding declination to disappear.