🔗 Share this article Among the Devastated Remains of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Volume I’d Translated In the rubble of a collapsed structure, a single image stayed with me: a tome I had rendered from the English language to Persian, sitting half-buried in dust and ash. Its cover was shredded and dirtied, its leaves curled and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking. A Metropolis Amid Bombardment Two days before, missiles began striking the city. There were no alarms, just unexpected, powerful detonations. The digital network was entirely cut off. I was in my flat, rendering a text about what it means to transport text across languages, and the morals and anxieties of taking on another’s perspective. As structures came down, I sat editing a text that argued, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of significance. Everything halted. A manuscript my publisher had been about to send to press was stuck when the printing house shut down. Retailers closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, valuable books 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 make it through the night. Separation and Loss My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be safer towns – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a image: in the faraway, a plant was on fire, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to pursue them. During those days, feelings passed over the city like weather: sudden fear, anxiety, indignation at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and sources that the craft demands. Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every window was shattered, the furniture lay ruined, objects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an easel, declining to let quiet and dirt have the final say. Translating Sorrow A photograph spread online of a 23-year-old writer who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between passages, calling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: changing ruin into art, loss into poetry, grief into longing. The Work as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by destruction, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of 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 impossible, yet still worth pursuing. During those nights, I understood translation as something more than an art form: it was an act of resistance, of holding one's ground, of holding on. One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his prison cell, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, discipline, support, and symbol” all at once. An Enduring Legacy And then came the picture. I saw it on a news site and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, damaged but whole, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the rubble and ruins. For most of my career, I had been unseen, 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 political act”, but I had never felt the full weight 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 haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, stubborn refusal to disappear.
In the rubble of a collapsed structure, a single image stayed with me: a tome I had rendered from the English language to Persian, sitting half-buried in dust and ash. Its cover was shredded and dirtied, its leaves curled and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking. A Metropolis Amid Bombardment Two days before, missiles began striking the city. There were no alarms, just unexpected, powerful detonations. The digital network was entirely cut off. I was in my flat, rendering a text about what it means to transport text across languages, and the morals and anxieties of taking on another’s perspective. As structures came down, I sat editing a text that argued, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of significance. Everything halted. A manuscript my publisher had been about to send to press was stuck when the printing house shut down. Retailers closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, valuable books 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 make it through the night. Separation and Loss My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be safer towns – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a image: in the faraway, a plant was on fire, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to pursue them. During those days, feelings passed over the city like weather: sudden fear, anxiety, indignation at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and sources that the craft demands. Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every window was shattered, the furniture lay ruined, objects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an easel, declining to let quiet and dirt have the final say. Translating Sorrow A photograph spread online of a 23-year-old writer who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her writing went was widely shared with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between passages, calling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: changing ruin into art, loss into poetry, grief into longing. The Work as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by destruction, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of 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 impossible, yet still worth pursuing. During those nights, I understood translation as something more than an art form: it was an act of resistance, of holding one's ground, of holding on. One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his prison cell, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, discipline, support, and symbol” all at once. An Enduring Legacy And then came the picture. I saw it on a news site and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, damaged but whole, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the rubble and ruins. For most of my career, I had been unseen, 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 political act”, but I had never felt the full weight 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 haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, stubborn refusal to disappear.