Within those Bombed-Out Debris of an Apartment Block, I Found a Volume I Had Rendered

Within the wreckage of a fallen apartment block, a solitary vision remained with me: a book I had rendered from the English language to Persian, lying partially covered in dirt and soot. Its cover was ripped and dirtied, its leaves bent and singed, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

An Urban Center During Assault

Two days earlier, missiles began striking the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, powerful explosions. The web was completely severed. I was in my apartment, rendering a text about what it means to move text across tongues, and the ethics and concerns of taking on someone else's narrative. As structures fell, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the endurance of significance.

Everything stopped. A book my publisher had been about to publish was stranded when the printer ceased operations. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, holding dictionaries, rare editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my career'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 safer locations – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the faraway, a factory was burning, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like a storm: sudden fear, apprehension, moral outrage at the injustice, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and materials that the work demands.

Outside, shockwaves blew windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every pane was shattered, the furniture lay damaged, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an easel, choosing not to let silence and debris have the ultimate victory.

Converting Sorrow

A image was shared online of a young artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her poem went viral alongside her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between passages, calling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some buried remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: turning devastation into art, death into verse, sorrow into search.

The Craft as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst ruin, I found myself working on a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than an art form: it was an act of defiance, of staying put, of enduring.

One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that linguistic work become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, practice, anchor, and analogy” all at once.

A Marked 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 works, marked but intact, my name shown on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, drained of life among the debris 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 stared 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 attack, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else falls away. It is a subtle, unyielding refusal to disappear.