Among those Bombed-Out Debris of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Book I Had Rendered

In the debris of a fallen building, a solitary sight stayed with me: a book I had translated from the English language to Farsi, sitting partially covered in dust and ash. Its jacket was ripped and smudged, its pages curled and burned, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking.

An Urban Center During Bombardment

Two days before, rockets started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, powerful explosions. The web was completely severed. I was in my apartment, working on a text about what it means to move words across cultures, and the principles and anxieties of inhabiting a different narrative. As buildings fell, I sat editing a text that contended, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of purpose.

Everything ceased. A book my publishing house had been about to publish was halted when the printer closed. Bookstores closed one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, holding lexicons, rare editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That library was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Separation and Devastation

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the background, a industrial site was burning, black smoke coiling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to chase them.

During those days, emotions moved through the city like a storm: instant fear, anxiety, indignation at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and references that the craft demands.

Outside, blast waves tore windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every pane was destroyed, the furniture lay ruined, personal effects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an stand, declining to let silence and debris have the last word.

Transforming Pain

A photograph was shared online of a 23-year-old poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared next to her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an older woman running between alleys, yelling a name. People said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some repressed recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

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

Translation as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself rendering a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet kept working until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than a skill: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of holding on.

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

An Enduring Legacy

And then came the image. I noticed it on a news site and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, damaged but whole, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the concrete and ruins. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but enduring.

I looked at 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 mattered”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else falls away. It is a quiet, determined rejection to disappear.