Among the Devastated Debris of an Residential Building, I Found a Book I Had Translated

Among the debris of a collapsed structure, a single vision remained with me: a volume I had converted from English to Persian, resting half-buried in dust and ash. Its jacket was torn and smudged, its pages bent and singed, but it was still legible. Still speaking.

An Urban Center During Assault

Two days before, rockets began striking the city. There were no alarms, just unexpected, violent blasts. The web was entirely disconnected. I was in my apartment, translating a text about what it means to move words across languages, and the principles and concerns of taking on another’s voice. As buildings fell, I sat editing a text that contended, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of meaning.

Everything ceased. A book my publisher had been about to publish was stranded when the facility shut down. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, holding dictionaries, hard-to-find books I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Distance and Loss

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous locations – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the background, a factory was on fire, dark smoke curling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to follow them.

During those days, emotions moved through the city like weather: sudden dread, unease, righteous anger at the injustice, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the bombardment eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and sources that translation demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every sheet of glass was broken, the belongings lay ruined, household items scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, painting at an stand, choosing not to let stillness and debris have the last word.

Transforming Pain

A image circulated on social media of a 23-year-old writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral next to her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman running between alleys, calling a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated recollection. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: changing devastation into image, loss into lines, grief into longing.

Translation as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of ruin, I found myself rendering a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost 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 longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than literary craft: 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 prison cell, asking for more resources, insisting that translation become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, hope, discipline, support, and metaphor” all at once.

A Marked Legacy

And then came the photograph. I saw it on a news site and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, scarred 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 unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but surviving.

I gazed upon 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 mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a persistent, unyielding rejection to be silenced.