Among the Bombed-Out Remains of an Residential Building, I Saw a Book I Had Rendered

In the wreckage of a collapsed building, a particular sight lingered with me: a book I had converted from the English language to Farsi, resting half-buried in dirt and ash. Its cover was ripped and dirtied, its sheets curled and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still uttering words.

A City Under Bombardment

Two days earlier, projectiles commenced attacking the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, violent detonations. The internet was totally severed. I was in my residence, rendering a work about what it means to carry language across tongues, and the ethics and concerns of occupying someone else's voice. As edifices collapsed, I sat editing a text that contended, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of significance.

Everything stopped. A manuscript my publisher had been about to send to press was halted when the printer closed. 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 thinking about the library in my apartment, stocked with lexicons, rare editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Separation and Grief

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous towns – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the background, a industrial site was on fire, dark smoke coiling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods passed over the city like a front: swift dread, anxiety, righteous anger at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the psychological cost, the shelling eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and sources that translation demands.

Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every window was broken, the possessions lay ruined, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an stand, choosing not to let quiet and dust have the ultimate victory.

Translating Grief

A photograph was shared online of a young poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her verse went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman hurrying between passages, yelling 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 searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all transforming, in our own way: changing devastation into picture, demise into poetry, sorrow into search.

The Work as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of destruction, 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 significant meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all yearned for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth striving for.

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

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his confinement, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, rigor, foundation, and metaphor” all at once.

A Marked Legacy

And then came the picture. I saw it on a website and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, damaged but intact, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been black and white, devoid of life among the concrete and ruins. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but surviving.

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 bombardment, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, unyielding declination to be silenced.