Within those Devastated Debris of an Residential Building, I Saw a Volume I’d Rendered

Within the debris of a collapsed apartment block, a particular vision remained with me: a volume I had converted from English to Persian, lying partly concealed in dust and ash. Its front was shredded and smudged, its leaves curled and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking.

A Metropolis During Attack

Two days earlier, missiles began striking the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, violent explosions. The internet was completely cut off. I was in my flat, translating a book about what it means to carry language across languages, and the principles and worries of taking on another’s perspective. As edifices came down, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of purpose.

Everything stopped. A manuscript my publisher had been about to publish was stuck when the printing house ceased operations. Bookstores shut one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, holding dictionaries, hard-to-find volumes I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Devastation

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be safer locations – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a image: in the distance, a industrial site was ablaze, dark smoke coiling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods swept through the city like a storm: instant terror, apprehension, moral outrage at the injustice, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the shelling destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and materials that the work demands.

Outside, shockwaves blew windows from their frames; at a relative's house, every pane was destroyed, the belongings lay ruined, objects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an easel, declining to let stillness and dust have the final say.

Translating Grief

A picture circulated online of a 23-year-old writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral alongside her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an older woman hurrying between alleyways, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some deep-seated recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: turning devastation into picture, loss into poetry, mourning into search.

The Work as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of ruin, I found myself working on a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet kept working until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility 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 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 cell, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, aspiration, discipline, support, and symbol” all at once.

An Enduring Voice

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a news site and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, scarred but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained of life among the debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but persisting.

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