Amid the Bombed-Out Remains of an Residential Building, I Saw a Volume I’d Rendered

In the debris of a destroyed structure, a single sight remained with me: a volume I had converted from the English language to Persian, sitting half-buried in dirt and ash. Its cover was torn and dirtied, its pages curled and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still uttering words.

A Metropolis Under Bombardment

Two days before, rockets began striking the city. There were no warnings, just abrupt, violent explosions. The internet was totally cut off. I was in my apartment, translating a text about what it means to move language across tongues, and the ethics and worries of taking on someone else's perspective. As buildings came down, I sat polishing a text that argued, 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 stuck when the printer closed. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, stocked with reference books, valuable editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Distance and Loss

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous areas – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a picture: in the background, a industrial site was burning, thick smoke coiling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like a front: swift fear, apprehension, moral outrage at the unfairness, then apathy. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and materials that the work demands.

Outside, concussive forces tore windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every window was shattered, the possessions lay broken, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an stand, choosing not to let silence and dirt have the ultimate victory.

Transforming Grief

A picture spread online of a young artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her poem went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman running between alleyways, calling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some deep-seated memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: turning ruin into image, loss into poetry, mourning into longing.

The Craft as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by destruction, 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 working until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all yearned for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than a skill: it was an act of defiance, of remaining, of enduring.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that linguistic work become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, hope, rigor, foundation, and metaphor” all at once.

A Marked Work

And then came the picture. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, damaged but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been monochrome, 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 enduring.

I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice was important”. 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.