Amid the Ruined Remains of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Book I Had Rendered

Within the rubble of a collapsed building, a solitary sight lingered with me: a book I had translated from English to Persian, sitting partly concealed in dirt and ash. Its jacket was torn and dirtied, its leaves bent and burned, but it was still legible. Still speaking.

A Metropolis Amid Assault

Two days earlier, missiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, forceful explosions. The internet was completely disconnected. I was in my apartment, translating a book about what it means to move language across tongues, and the ethics and concerns of occupying another’s voice. As edifices fell, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything stopped. A project my publisher had been about to send to press was stranded when the printing house shut down. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop worrying about the bookshelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, valuable books I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.

Separation and Loss

My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a picture: in the faraway, a industrial site was on fire, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods moved through the city like weather: sudden dread, apprehension, moral outrage at the injustice, then detachment. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and references that the work demands.

Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their sashes; at a cousin's house, every sheet of glass was broken, the possessions lay broken, objects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an stand, declining to let quiet and dirt have the final say.

Transforming Sorrow

A photograph circulated on social media of a 23-year-old writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing 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. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all converting, in our own way: transforming devastation into picture, loss into verse, sorrow into search.

The Work as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still amidst ruin, I found myself translating a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will recover 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 kept producing until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all desired – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth reaching toward.

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than literary craft: it was an act of perseverance, of remaining, of persisting.

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher 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 truth, hope, practice, foundation, and metaphor” all at once.

An Enduring Legacy

And then came the picture. I spotted it on a news site and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, marked but whole, my name shown on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, drained of life among the concrete and ruins. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but persisting.

I stared 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 fire, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, unyielding refusal to disappear.