Within the Ruined Debris of an Apartment Block, I Found a Book I Had Rendered

In the wreckage of a destroyed structure, a solitary sight remained with me: a volume I had rendered from the English language to Persian, lying partially covered in dirt and ash. Its front was shredded and dirtied, its pages curled and burned, but it was still legible. Still uttering words.

An Urban Center Amid Attack

Two days before, missiles began striking the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, powerful detonations. The internet was totally severed. I was in my flat, translating a book about what it means to carry text across languages, and the principles and concerns of occupying another’s narrative. As edifices fell, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the endurance of significance.

Everything ceased. A project my publisher had been about to go to print was stuck when the printing house shut down. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the blasts were too imminent, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the shelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, rare volumes I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my lifework, 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 less dangerous towns – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the background, a plant was ablaze, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, moods moved through the city like a storm: swift terror, unease, indignation at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and sources that the craft demands.

Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their sashes; at a relative's house, every window was destroyed, the furniture lay broken, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, creating at an stand, choosing not to let silence and debris have the final say.

Transforming Sorrow

A picture circulated on social media of a 23-year-old artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an elderly woman dashing between passages, shouting a name. People said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning destruction into image, death into lines, mourning into search.

The Work as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, I found myself translating a fable about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound 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 reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all desired – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for.

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

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

A Scarred Legacy

And then came the picture. I saw it on a platform and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, scarred but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained of life among the debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but surviving.

I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, 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 erased. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, unyielding rejection to be silenced.