Among the Bombed-Out Debris of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Book I Had Rendered

In the wreckage of a destroyed apartment block, a particular sight lingered with me: a book I had translated from the English language to Persian, resting partially covered in dust and ash. Its jacket was ripped and dirtied, its leaves bent and singed, but it was still legible. Still communicating.

An Urban Center Amid Attack

Two days earlier, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, forceful explosions. The web was completely severed. I was in my residence, working on a work about what it means to transport words across languages, and the principles and concerns of occupying a different narrative. As buildings collapsed, I sat revising a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the persistence of purpose.

Everything halted. A book my publishing house had been about to send to press was stuck when the facility closed. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, stocked with dictionaries, valuable editions I had spent years gathering 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 make it through the night.

Distance and Loss

My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a image: in the background, a factory was on fire, dark smoke curling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to pursue them.

During those days, feelings swept through the city like weather: swift fear, unease, indignation at the unfairness, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and materials that translation demands.

Outside, blast waves blew windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every pane was shattered, the furniture lay broken, household items scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an stand, refusing to let quiet and dust have the final say.

Translating Pain

A picture was shared digitally of a young poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral next to her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman hurrying between alleyways, shouting a name. People said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried remembrance. She was searching for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: changing devastation into picture, death into verse, sorrow into quest.

The Craft as Resistance

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of destruction, I found myself translating a fable about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all desired – seemingly impossible, yet still worth pursuing.

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

One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his cell, asking for more resources, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, hope, discipline, support, and metaphor” all at once.

An Enduring Work

And then came the photograph. I saw it on a news site and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, marked but whole, my name shown on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been black and white, stripped of life among the debris and ruins. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but persisting.

I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, determined refusal to vanish.