Within the Devastated Remains of an Apartment Block, I Found a Book I Had Rendered

Within the debris of a destroyed structure, a single sight lingered with me: a book I had translated from English to Persian, resting partly concealed in dust and ash. Its front was shredded and stained, its leaves bent and singed, but it was still readable. Still uttering words.

A Metropolis Under Attack

Two days before, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just abrupt, powerful explosions. The digital network was entirely cut off. I was in my residence, working on a text about what it means to carry words across cultures, and the ethics and anxieties of taking on another’s narrative. As structures fell, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the endurance of purpose.

Everything halted. A project my publishing house had been about to publish was stranded when the printing house shut down. Retailers shut one by one. One night, when the booms were too close, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, stocked with reference books, rare volumes I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night.

Distance and Grief

My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a photo: in the distance, a plant was burning, dark smoke curling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly far away, and peril seemed to chase them.

During those days, moods swept through the city like a front: instant dread, unease, moral outrage at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and materials that the craft demands.

Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every pane was shattered, the belongings lay ruined, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, painting at an stand, choosing not to let stillness and debris have the last word.

Converting Sorrow

A image spread online of a 23-year-old writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing went spread rapidly alongside her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman running between passages, yelling a name. People said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some buried memory. She was looking for a child who would never come home.

We were all translating, in our own way: transforming ruin into picture, loss into verse, grief into quest.

The Craft as Persistence

A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of destruction, I found myself rendering a story for young readers 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 experienced the loss of 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 tranquility we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for.

During those nights, I understood translation as something more than literary craft: it was an act of perseverance, of holding one's ground, of enduring.

One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that linguistic work become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, aspiration, practice, foundation, and metaphor” all at once.

A Scarred Work

And then came the image. I spotted it on a website and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, marked but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, stripped of life among the rubble and debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but surviving.

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 true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a persistent, determined refusal to be silenced.