Among those Devastated Debris of an Residential Building, I Found a Book I’d Rendered

Among the rubble of a destroyed apartment block, a solitary image remained with me: a book I had rendered from English to Persian, resting half-buried in dust and ash. Its front was ripped and stained, its leaves bent and singed, but it was still legible. Still uttering words.

A Metropolis During Assault

Two days earlier, missiles commenced attacking the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, violent detonations. The internet was totally severed. I was in my residence, translating a book about what it means to move language across cultures, and the principles and concerns of inhabiting another’s narrative. As buildings collapsed, I sat editing a text that contended, in its understated way, for the persistence of meaning.

Everything ceased. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to go to print was halted when the printer closed. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, stocked with dictionaries, hard-to-find editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Dispersal and Grief

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure towns – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a picture: in the background, a plant was on fire, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods moved through the city like a front: instant dread, anxiety, indignation at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the attack destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate look-ups and sources that the work demands.

Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every pane was shattered, the furniture lay ruined, personal effects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an easel, declining to let silence and dirt have the ultimate victory.

Translating Pain

A image spread on social media of a 23-year-old writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an older woman hurrying between passages, shouting a name. People said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some repressed memory. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: turning ruin into image, demise into lines, sorrow into quest.

The Craft as Defiance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself rendering a fable 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 persisted creating until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all yearned for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing.

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than literary craft: it was an act of resistance, of staying put, of holding on.

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his cell, asking for more resources, insisting that translation become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, aspiration, practice, foundation, and metaphor” all at once.

A Scarred Voice

And then came the photograph. I spotted it on a platform and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, damaged but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, stripped of life among the debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but enduring.

I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a act with consequences”, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a quiet, stubborn declination to be silenced.