Amid the Devastated Debris of an Residential Building, I Saw a Book I Had Translated

In the debris of a collapsed building, a single vision remained with me: a book I had rendered from the English language to Persian, sitting partly concealed in dirt and ash. Its cover was ripped and dirtied, its sheets bent and burned, but it was still readable. Still speaking.

A City Under Assault

Two days prior, projectiles began striking the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, violent detonations. The digital network was totally disconnected. I was in my flat, translating a book about what it means to carry words across languages, and the morals and anxieties of inhabiting someone else's perspective. As buildings collapsed, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its subtle way, for the endurance of significance.

Everything ceased. A project my publishing house had been about to publish was stuck when the printing house closed. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, stocked with lexicons, valuable editions I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That library was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Separation and Devastation

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 departing, she sent me a picture: in the faraway, a industrial site was on fire, thick smoke coiling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly far away, and peril seemed to pursue them.

During those days, moods swept through the city like a storm: sudden terror, apprehension, righteous anger at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant searches and sources that the craft demands.

Outside, concussive forces tore windows from their casings; at a family member's house, every pane was broken, the possessions lay damaged, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, creating at an stand, refusing to let quiet and debris have the final say.

Converting Grief

A photograph spread digitally of a young writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman dashing between alleyways, yelling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: changing devastation into image, loss into lines, mourning into search.

The Craft as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself translating a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet continued creating 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 unattainable, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than literary craft: it was an act of resistance, of staying put, of holding on.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his confinement, asking for more resources, insisting that linguistic work become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, practice, support, and symbol” all at once.

An Enduring Voice

And then came the image. I noticed it on a website and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, damaged but intact, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, devoid of life among the rubble and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but surviving.

I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a act with consequences”, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a persistent, stubborn rejection to vanish.