Amid those Devastated Remains of an Residential Building, I Found a Volume I Had Translated

Within the debris of a destroyed structure, a particular sight remained with me: a volume I had converted from the English language to Persian, sitting half-buried in dust and soot. Its cover was shredded and dirtied, its sheets bent and scorched, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

A Metropolis Amid Attack

Two days prior, missiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, forceful explosions. The internet was completely cut off. I was in my residence, translating a text about what it means to transport words across languages, and the ethics and worries of inhabiting another’s perspective. As edifices collapsed, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of significance.

Everything stopped. A project my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the facility closed. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, holding lexicons, valuable books I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Dispersal and Loss

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a photo: in the distance, a industrial site was on fire, thick smoke curling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings swept through the city like a storm: instant dread, apprehension, indignation at the injustice, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the shelling eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and materials that translation demands.

Outside, shockwaves ripped windows from their sashes; at a relative's house, every sheet of glass was destroyed, the furniture lay broken, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, painting at an easel, choosing not to let stillness and debris have the final say.

Transforming Pain

A photograph spread on social media of a 23-year-old writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman running between alleys, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

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

Translation as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of destruction, I found myself working on a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet kept creating until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond literary craft: it was an act of perseverance, of remaining, of persisting.

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his prison cell, asking for more resources, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, practice, anchor, and symbol” all at once.

A Scarred Voice

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a news site and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, marked but whole, my name shown on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained 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 stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a quiet, unyielding refusal to disappear.