Among those Bombed-Out Remains of an Residential Building, I Saw a Volume I Had Translated

Within the rubble of a fallen building, a solitary image stayed with me: a book I had translated from English to Persian, lying partially covered in dust and ash. Its front was ripped and smudged, its sheets bent and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking.

A Metropolis Under Attack

Two days before, missiles commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, violent blasts. The internet was completely severed. I was in my flat, rendering a book about what it means to carry language across cultures, and the principles and anxieties of taking on someone else's voice. As buildings collapsed, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the lasting nature of significance.

Everything halted. A project my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the printing house closed. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the bookshelves in my apartment, filled with reference books, valuable editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever worked on. That library 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 more secure areas – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a picture: in the distance, a industrial site was ablaze, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and peril seemed to pursue them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like weather: sudden fear, unease, moral outrage at the injustice, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the attack eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and sources that translation demands.

Outside, shockwaves tore windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the possessions lay broken, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, painting at an stand, declining to let silence and dirt have the last word.

Transforming Grief

A image was shared digitally of a young poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went spread rapidly with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman hurrying between alleyways, calling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some repressed memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: turning devastation into picture, demise into verse, mourning into quest.

Translation as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by ruin, I found myself working on 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 experienced the loss of his sight yet kept producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his cell, asking for more resources, insisting that linguistic work become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, aspiration, practice, anchor, and analogy” all at once.

A Scarred Legacy

And then came the picture. I spotted it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but whole, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, stripped of life among the concrete and debris. 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 statement”, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a persistent, unyielding refusal to be silenced.