🔗 Share this article Within the Devastated Remains of an Apartment Block, I Found a Book I’d Rendered Within the wreckage of a destroyed apartment block, a particular vision lingered with me: a book I had converted from the English language to Persian, resting partially covered in dust and ash. Its front was ripped and dirtied, its sheets curled and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking. An Urban Center During Attack Two days earlier, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, violent blasts. The web was totally disconnected. I was in my flat, rendering a text about what it means to carry words across languages, and the principles and concerns of inhabiting another’s narrative. As structures came down, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its subtle way, for the endurance of purpose. Everything ceased. A book my publisher had been about to publish was stuck when the facility shut down. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, hard-to-find editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night. Separation and Loss My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure towns – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a picture: in the faraway, a plant was ablaze, dark smoke coiling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to follow them. During those days, feelings moved through the city like a storm: swift fear, unease, moral outrage at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate look-ups and materials that translation demands. Outside, shockwaves tore windows from their casings; at a cousin's house, every pane was destroyed, the belongings lay ruined, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an stand, declining to let quiet and dirt have the last word. Translating Pain A photograph spread digitally of a 23-year-old poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared next to her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an elderly woman dashing between passages, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all transforming, in our own way: turning devastation into picture, loss into poetry, mourning into search. Translation as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of ruin, I found myself working on a fable about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet kept producing until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth pursuing. During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of defiance, of remaining, of enduring. One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that linguistic work become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, hope, practice, support, and metaphor” all at once. An Enduring Voice And then came the picture. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, marked but intact, my name printed 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 debris. For most of my career, I had been invisible, 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 act with consequences”, 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 forgotten. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else disappears. It is a persistent, stubborn rejection to vanish.
Within the wreckage of a destroyed apartment block, a particular vision lingered with me: a book I had converted from the English language to Persian, resting partially covered in dust and ash. Its front was ripped and dirtied, its sheets curled and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking. An Urban Center During Attack Two days earlier, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, violent blasts. The web was totally disconnected. I was in my flat, rendering a text about what it means to carry words across languages, and the principles and concerns of inhabiting another’s narrative. As structures came down, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its subtle way, for the endurance of purpose. Everything ceased. A book my publisher had been about to publish was stuck when the facility shut down. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, hard-to-find editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night. Separation and Loss My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure towns – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a picture: in the faraway, a plant was ablaze, dark smoke coiling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to follow them. During those days, feelings moved through the city like a storm: swift fear, unease, moral outrage at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate look-ups and materials that translation demands. Outside, shockwaves tore windows from their casings; at a cousin's house, every pane was destroyed, the belongings lay ruined, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an stand, declining to let quiet and dirt have the last word. Translating Pain A photograph spread digitally of a 23-year-old poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared next to her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an elderly woman dashing between passages, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all transforming, in our own way: turning devastation into picture, loss into poetry, mourning into search. Translation as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of ruin, I found myself working on a fable about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet kept producing until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth pursuing. During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of defiance, of remaining, of enduring. One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that linguistic work become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, hope, practice, support, and metaphor” all at once. An Enduring Voice And then came the picture. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, marked but intact, my name printed 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 debris. For most of my career, I had been invisible, 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 act with consequences”, 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 forgotten. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else disappears. It is a persistent, stubborn rejection to vanish.