🔗 Share this article Within the Devastated Remains of an Residential Building, I Saw a Book I’d Translated Within the debris of a fallen apartment block, a single image stayed with me: a tome I had rendered from the English language to Farsi, resting half-buried in dirt and ash. Its jacket was torn and smudged, its sheets bent and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still uttering words. A City Amid Attack Two days earlier, missiles began striking the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, powerful explosions. The digital network was completely severed. I was in my residence, rendering a book about what it means to carry text across cultures, and the principles and anxieties of occupying a different voice. As structures collapsed, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its understated way, for the persistence of significance. Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to send to press was stranded when the printer shut down. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, holding dictionaries, valuable books I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night. Separation and Devastation My partner 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 picture: in the distance, a industrial site was ablaze, thick smoke coiling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to follow them. During those days, feelings moved through the city like a storm: swift dread, apprehension, indignation at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and sources that the craft demands. Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their sashes; at a relative's house, every pane was broken, the belongings lay ruined, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an easel, refusing to let stillness and debris have the last word. Transforming Pain A picture circulated online of a 23-year-old artist who was lost 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 elderly woman hurrying between alleyways, calling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some buried remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home. We were all translating, in our own way: turning destruction into image, death into lines, mourning into longing. The Craft as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of ruin, I found myself translating a fable 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 kept creating until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing. During those nights, I understood translation as something more than an art form: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of enduring. One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his confinement, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, discipline, anchor, and metaphor” all at once. An Enduring Work And then came the picture. I saw it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, damaged but intact, my name displayed 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 wreckage. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but enduring. I looked at 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 attack, 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 endure when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, stubborn rejection to be silenced.
Within the debris of a fallen apartment block, a single image stayed with me: a tome I had rendered from the English language to Farsi, resting half-buried in dirt and ash. Its jacket was torn and smudged, its sheets bent and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still uttering words. A City Amid Attack Two days earlier, missiles began striking the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, powerful explosions. The digital network was completely severed. I was in my residence, rendering a book about what it means to carry text across cultures, and the principles and anxieties of occupying a different voice. As structures collapsed, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its understated way, for the persistence of significance. Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to send to press was stranded when the printer shut down. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, holding dictionaries, valuable books I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night. Separation and Devastation My partner 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 picture: in the distance, a industrial site was ablaze, thick smoke coiling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to follow them. During those days, feelings moved through the city like a storm: swift dread, apprehension, indignation at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the psychological cost, the bombardment eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and sources that the craft demands. Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their sashes; at a relative's house, every pane was broken, the belongings lay ruined, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an easel, refusing to let stillness and debris have the last word. Transforming Pain A picture circulated online of a 23-year-old artist who was lost 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 elderly woman hurrying between alleyways, calling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some buried remembrance. She was looking for a child who would never come home. We were all translating, in our own way: turning destruction into image, death into lines, mourning into longing. The Craft as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of ruin, I found myself translating a fable 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 kept creating until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing. During those nights, I understood translation as something more than an art form: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of enduring. One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his confinement, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, discipline, anchor, and metaphor” all at once. An Enduring Work And then came the picture. I saw it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, damaged but intact, my name displayed 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 wreckage. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible – scarred, but enduring. I looked at 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 attack, 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 endure when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, stubborn rejection to be silenced.