Within those Bombed-Out Remains of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Book I Had Translated

Among the rubble of a destroyed building, a particular vision remained with me: a book I had converted from the English language to Persian, lying partly concealed in dust and ash. Its jacket was ripped and smudged, its sheets curled and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking.

An Urban Center Amid Attack

Two days prior, missiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just abrupt, powerful explosions. The web was entirely cut off. I was in my apartment, translating a work about what it means to move text across languages, and the morals and worries of taking on a different voice. As structures fell, I sat editing a text that contended, in its understated way, for the persistence of meaning.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to go to print was stranded when the printer closed. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. 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 lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Separation and Loss

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be safer towns – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a photo: in the faraway, a plant was on fire, dark smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and peril seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings swept through the city like weather: sudden terror, anxiety, moral outrage at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling 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, concussive forces ripped windows from their casings; at a family member's house, every pane was destroyed, the belongings lay ruined, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, working at an stand, choosing not to let stillness and dust have the final say.

Converting Pain

A photograph spread on social media of a young 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 alleyways, yelling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some buried recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: turning destruction into picture, demise into poetry, grief into longing.

Translation as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of ruin, I found myself translating a story for young readers 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 persisted creating until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly impossible, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of perseverance, of staying put, of holding on.

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

A Scarred Work

And then came the photograph. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, drained of life among the concrete and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – 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 fire, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else disappears. It is a quiet, stubborn rejection to disappear.