In the rubble of a fallen building, a particular vision remained with me: a book I had rendered from the English language to Farsi, sitting half-buried in dust and ash. Its jacket was shredded and stained, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still readable. Still communicating.
A City Amid Bombardment
Two days before, projectiles began striking the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, violent blasts. The digital network was completely cut off. I was in my apartment, working on a work about what it means to move language across tongues, and the principles and worries of taking on another’s narrative. As structures came down, I sat editing a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the lasting nature of significance.
Everything ceased. A book my publishing house had been about to publish was halted when the facility ceased operations. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop thinking about the shelves in my apartment, stocked with reference books, hard-to-find books I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night.
Separation and Devastation
My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure towns – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a picture: in the distance, a plant was ablaze, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to chase them.
During those days, feelings passed over the city like weather: sudden dread, anxiety, indignation at the unfairness, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate look-ups and materials that the work demands.
Outside, concussive forces tore windows from their casings; at a cousin's house, every sheet of glass was destroyed, the belongings lay ruined, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an stand, declining to let silence and debris have the ultimate victory.
Translating Pain
A photograph spread digitally of a 23-year-old poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her poem went was widely shared with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an elderly woman dashing between alleys, calling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some repressed recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home.
We were all converting, in our own way: turning ruin into art, demise into lines, sorrow into search.
The Craft as Defiance
A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, 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 profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet kept creating until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all desired – seemingly unattainable, yet still worth striving for.
During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than a skill: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of enduring.
One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more resources, insisting that translation become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, practice, anchor, and metaphor” all at once.
An Enduring Voice
And then came the picture. I saw it on a news site and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, scarred but intact, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, drained of life among the rubble 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 gazed upon 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 obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a persistent, stubborn refusal to vanish.
