Among those Bombed-Out Remains of an Residential Building, I Saw a Volume I Had Rendered

Among the debris of a collapsed structure, a single image stayed with me: a volume I had translated from English to Persian, resting partly concealed in dust and ash. Its cover was shredded and stained, its leaves curled and burned, but it was still decipherable. Still uttering words.

An Urban Center Amid Bombardment

Two days prior, missiles began striking the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, powerful detonations. The digital network was completely cut off. I was in my flat, rendering a text about what it means to transport words across cultures, and the principles and concerns of taking on a different voice. As structures came down, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the lasting nature of purpose.

Everything ceased. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to go to print was stranded when the facility ceased operations. Bookstores shut one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop thinking about the bookshelves in my apartment, holding dictionaries, hard-to-find books I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night.

Dispersal and Loss

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the background, a factory was burning, dark smoke curling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, feelings passed over the city like a front: swift dread, apprehension, righteous anger at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant searches and references that the craft demands.

Outside, shockwaves ripped windows from their casings; at a cousin's house, every pane was broken, the possessions lay broken, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an easel, choosing not to let stillness and dust have the final say.

Converting Grief

A image was shared digitally of a young poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her writing went spread rapidly with her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between passages, calling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some repressed memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: transforming ruin into art, demise into lines, mourning into quest.

Translation as Persistence

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

During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond literary craft: it was an act of resistance, of holding one's ground, of persisting.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his prison cell, 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 metaphor” all at once.

A Scarred Voice

And then came the picture. I spotted it on a news site and saw that, within 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 color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but enduring.

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 true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a subtle, unyielding declination to be silenced.