🔗 Share this article Amid the Bombed-Out Debris of an Residential Building, I Found a Book I’d Translated Among the rubble of a fallen apartment block, a particular image remained with me: a book I had rendered from English to Farsi, resting partially covered in dust and ash. Its jacket was shredded and smudged, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still readable. Still communicating. A City During Assault Two days prior, rockets commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, powerful explosions. The web was completely disconnected. I was in my apartment, translating a text about what it means to carry text across languages, and the ethics and anxieties of inhabiting another’s voice. As edifices came down, I sat revising a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the endurance of meaning. Everything stopped. A project my publisher had been about to send to press was stuck when the printer ceased operations. Bookstores shut one by one. One night, when the explosions 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 dictionaries, rare volumes I had spent years collecting 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 survive the night. Distance and Loss My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a photo: in the background, a plant was ablaze, dark smoke curling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to follow them. During those days, feelings swept through the city like weather: sudden fear, apprehension, righteous anger at the injustice, then detachment. 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, shockwaves ripped windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every sheet of glass was broken, the belongings lay broken, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an stand, refusing to let stillness and debris have the final say. Translating Sorrow A photograph spread digitally of a 23-year-old writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her verse went spread rapidly with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an elderly woman running between alleys, yelling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: transforming devastation into picture, demise into verse, sorrow into longing. Translation as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of destruction, I found myself working on 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 experienced the loss of his sight yet kept working until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth striving for. During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond literary craft: it was an act of perseverance, of holding one's ground, of persisting. One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his cell, asking for more resources, insisting that translation become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, goal, practice, foundation, and symbol” all at once. An Enduring Legacy And then came the photograph. I noticed it on a website and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, marked but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been black and white, drained 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 seen – 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 full weight of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, unyielding rejection to vanish.
Among the rubble of a fallen apartment block, a particular image remained with me: a book I had rendered from English to Farsi, resting partially covered in dust and ash. Its jacket was shredded and smudged, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still readable. Still communicating. A City During Assault Two days prior, rockets commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, powerful explosions. The web was completely disconnected. I was in my apartment, translating a text about what it means to carry text across languages, and the ethics and anxieties of inhabiting another’s voice. As edifices came down, I sat revising a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the endurance of meaning. Everything stopped. A project my publisher had been about to send to press was stuck when the printer ceased operations. Bookstores shut one by one. One night, when the explosions 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 dictionaries, rare volumes I had spent years collecting 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 survive the night. Distance and Loss My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a photo: in the background, a plant was ablaze, dark smoke curling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to follow them. During those days, feelings swept through the city like weather: sudden fear, apprehension, righteous anger at the injustice, then detachment. 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, shockwaves ripped windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every sheet of glass was broken, the belongings lay broken, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an stand, refusing to let stillness and debris have the final say. Translating Sorrow A photograph spread digitally of a 23-year-old writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her verse went spread rapidly with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an elderly woman running between alleys, yelling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: transforming devastation into picture, demise into verse, sorrow into longing. Translation as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of destruction, I found myself working on 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 experienced the loss of his sight yet kept working until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth striving for. During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond literary craft: it was an act of perseverance, of holding one's ground, of persisting. One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his cell, asking for more resources, insisting that translation become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, goal, practice, foundation, and symbol” all at once. An Enduring Legacy And then came the photograph. I noticed it on a website and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, marked but surviving, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been black and white, drained 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 seen – 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 full weight of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, unyielding rejection to vanish.