🔗 Share this article Among the Bombed-Out Debris of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Book I Had Translated In the debris of a destroyed structure, a particular vision remained with me: a book I had converted from English to Persian, lying partially covered in dust and soot. Its front was ripped and stained, its leaves bent and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking. A Metropolis Under Bombardment Two days earlier, missiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, forceful detonations. The internet was completely cut off. I was in my apartment, translating a book about what it means to carry words across tongues, and the principles and anxieties of inhabiting someone else's narrative. As edifices collapsed, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the endurance of significance. Everything stopped. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to go to print was stranded when the printing house closed. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too close, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, valuable editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night. Distance and Devastation My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous locations – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a photo: in the background, a plant was ablaze, thick smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to pursue them. During those days, feelings passed over the city like a storm: instant fear, anxiety, moral outrage at the injustice, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and references that the craft demands. Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their sashes; at a cousin's house, every pane was broken, the possessions lay damaged, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, working at an easel, declining to let stillness and dust have the last word. Translating Sorrow A picture circulated on social media of a young poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman running between passages, yelling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some repressed recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: turning ruin into picture, loss into verse, mourning into quest. The Work as Resistance A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, I found myself rendering 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 significant 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 striving for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all desired – seemingly impossible, yet still worth reaching toward. During those nights, I understood translation as something more than literary craft: it was an act of defiance, of remaining, of holding on. One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a facility; 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 “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, hope, discipline, support, and metaphor” all at once. An Enduring Work And then came the image. I spotted it on a news site and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, stripped of life among the concrete and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but surviving. I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, 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 forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a subtle, unyielding rejection to be silenced.
In the debris of a destroyed structure, a particular vision remained with me: a book I had converted from English to Persian, lying partially covered in dust and soot. Its front was ripped and stained, its leaves bent and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking. A Metropolis Under Bombardment Two days earlier, missiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, forceful detonations. The internet was completely cut off. I was in my apartment, translating a book about what it means to carry words across tongues, and the principles and anxieties of inhabiting someone else's narrative. As edifices collapsed, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the endurance of significance. Everything stopped. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to go to print was stranded when the printing house closed. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too close, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, valuable editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night. Distance and Devastation My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous locations – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a photo: in the background, a plant was ablaze, thick smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to pursue them. During those days, feelings passed over the city like a storm: instant fear, anxiety, moral outrage at the injustice, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and references that the craft demands. Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their sashes; at a cousin's house, every pane was broken, the possessions lay damaged, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, working at an easel, declining to let stillness and dust have the last word. Translating Sorrow A picture circulated on social media of a young poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman running between passages, yelling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some repressed recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: turning ruin into picture, loss into verse, mourning into quest. The Work as Resistance A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, I found myself rendering 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 significant 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 striving for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all desired – seemingly impossible, yet still worth reaching toward. During those nights, I understood translation as something more than literary craft: it was an act of defiance, of remaining, of holding on. One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a facility; 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 “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, hope, discipline, support, and metaphor” all at once. An Enduring Work And then came the image. I spotted it on a news site and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, stripped of life among the concrete and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but surviving. I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, 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 forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a subtle, unyielding rejection to be silenced.