Within the Bombed-Out Remains of an Residential Building, I Found a Book I Had Rendered

Within the debris of a collapsed structure, a particular sight remained with me: a volume I had rendered from the English language to Persian, lying partly concealed in dust and soot. Its cover was torn and smudged, its sheets curled and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking.

A City During Bombardment

Two days earlier, rockets began striking the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, forceful detonations. The web was entirely disconnected. I was in my residence, rendering a text about what it means to transport language across tongues, and the principles and worries of inhabiting a different narrative. As buildings collapsed, I sat editing a text that argued, in its subtle way, for the lasting nature of significance.

Everything halted. A manuscript my publisher had been about to send to press was halted when the printing house ceased operations. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, stocked with dictionaries, hard-to-find editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Loss

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous locations – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a image: in the distance, a factory was burning, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like a front: sudden dread, anxiety, indignation at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the attack 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 tore windows from their frames; at a relative's house, every window was broken, the belongings lay damaged, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an easel, choosing not to let silence and dust have the last word.

Transforming Pain

A photograph circulated digitally of a young artist who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an older woman hurrying between alleyways, calling a name. People said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some repressed recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: turning ruin into art, death into verse, sorrow into longing.

The Work as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself translating a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will get better 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 kept producing until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all longed for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more books, insisting that translation become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, goal, discipline, foundation, and symbol” all at once.

A Scarred Work

And then came the picture. I spotted it on a website and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, damaged 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 debris and ruins. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but persisting.

I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, unyielding rejection to vanish.