Within those Devastated Remains of an Apartment Block, I Found a Book I Had Rendered

Within the debris of a fallen structure, a single image stayed with me: a volume I had rendered from the English language to Persian, lying partly concealed in dirt and ash. Its cover was torn and stained, its leaves curled and burned, but it was still readable. Still speaking.

An Urban Center Under Assault

Two days prior, rockets started hitting the city. There were no alarms, just unexpected, violent explosions. The internet was totally cut off. I was in my apartment, translating a text about what it means to transport words across languages, and the principles and concerns of inhabiting a different voice. As structures came down, I sat editing a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the endurance of meaning.

Everything stopped. A book my publishing house had been about to go to print was stranded when the facility closed. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, holding lexicons, valuable editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Separation 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 travelled to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a photo: in the background, a industrial site was burning, dark smoke curling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly far away, and peril seemed to chase them.

During those days, feelings passed over the city like weather: swift terror, unease, righteous anger at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and references that translation demands.

Outside, shockwaves tore windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the belongings lay broken, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an easel, declining to let quiet and debris have the final say.

Transforming Grief

A picture was shared online of a 23-year-old artist who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an aged woman hurrying between alleyways, calling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: transforming destruction into picture, death into verse, mourning into quest.

The Craft as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself translating a fable about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued working until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than an art form: it was an act of defiance, of staying put, of persisting.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his confinement, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, aspiration, practice, anchor, and symbol” all at once.

A Marked Voice

And then came the image. I noticed it on a news site and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, damaged but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been black and white, stripped of life among the concrete and ruins. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – 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 complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else disappears. It is a subtle, stubborn rejection to disappear.