🔗 Share this article Amid those Ruined Debris of an Apartment Block, I Found a Book I Had Translated Within the debris of a fallen apartment block, a particular sight stayed with me: a volume I had rendered from the English language to Persian, sitting partly concealed in dirt and soot. Its jacket was ripped and dirtied, its leaves bent and singed, but it was still readable. Still speaking. A Metropolis During Assault Two days before, missiles began striking the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, violent blasts. The web was entirely severed. I was in my apartment, translating a book about what it means to transport words across languages, and the morals and concerns of inhabiting another’s perspective. As structures collapsed, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its subtle way, for the endurance of significance. Everything halted. A book my publisher had been about to send to press was halted when the printer shut down. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop thinking about the shelves in my apartment, stocked with dictionaries, hard-to-find editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That library was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night. Dispersal 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 departed to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a image: in the background, a industrial site was burning, dark smoke coiling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to follow them. During those days, moods passed over the city like a storm: sudden dread, apprehension, indignation at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and references that translation demands. Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their frames; at a relative's house, every window was destroyed, the belongings lay ruined, personal effects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an easel, declining to let quiet and dust have the final say. Translating Grief A picture was shared online of a young writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an older woman dashing between alleyways, calling a name. People said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all translating, in our own way: changing ruin into picture, death into lines, mourning into search. The Work as Resistance A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by destruction, I found myself translating a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth reaching toward. During those nights, I understood translation as something more than a skill: it was an act of resistance, of staying put, of holding on. One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that translation become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, discipline, anchor, and metaphor” all at once. A Marked Voice And then came the picture. I noticed it on a website and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, scarred but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, drained of life among the debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but persisting. 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 fire, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, stubborn rejection to vanish.
Within the debris of a fallen apartment block, a particular sight stayed with me: a volume I had rendered from the English language to Persian, sitting partly concealed in dirt and soot. Its jacket was ripped and dirtied, its leaves bent and singed, but it was still readable. Still speaking. A Metropolis During Assault Two days before, missiles began striking the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, violent blasts. The web was entirely severed. I was in my apartment, translating a book about what it means to transport words across languages, and the morals and concerns of inhabiting another’s perspective. As structures collapsed, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its subtle way, for the endurance of significance. Everything halted. A book my publisher had been about to send to press was halted when the printer shut down. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop thinking about the shelves in my apartment, stocked with dictionaries, hard-to-find editions I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That library was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night. Dispersal 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 departed to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a image: in the background, a industrial site was burning, dark smoke coiling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to follow them. During those days, moods passed over the city like a storm: sudden dread, apprehension, indignation at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and references that translation demands. Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their frames; at a relative's house, every window was destroyed, the belongings lay ruined, personal effects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an easel, declining to let quiet and dust have the final say. Translating Grief A picture was shared online of a young writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an older woman dashing between alleyways, calling a name. People said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all translating, in our own way: changing ruin into picture, death into lines, mourning into search. The Work as Resistance A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by destruction, I found myself translating a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth reaching toward. During those nights, I understood translation as something more than a skill: it was an act of resistance, of staying put, of holding on. One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his cell, asking for more books, insisting that translation become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, discipline, anchor, and metaphor” all at once. A Marked Voice And then came the picture. I noticed it on a website and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, scarred but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, drained of life among the debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but persisting. 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 fire, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, stubborn rejection to vanish.