🔗 Share this article Amid those Bombed-Out Debris of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Volume I’d Rendered Among the debris of a collapsed building, a particular sight stayed with me: a tome I had translated from English to Farsi, resting partly concealed in dirt and soot. Its front was shredded and smudged, its leaves bent and burned, but it was still legible. Still communicating. A Metropolis Amid Bombardment Two days earlier, projectiles began striking the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, violent blasts. The web was completely cut off. I was in my flat, translating a book about what it means to carry language across tongues, and the morals and concerns of inhabiting another’s narrative. As structures came down, I sat editing a text that contended, in its subtle way, for the persistence of purpose. Everything ceased. A project my publishing house had been about to send to press was halted when the printing house closed. Bookstores closed one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the bookshelves in my apartment, holding dictionaries, valuable volumes I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night. Distance and Devastation My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous towns – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a photo: in the distance, a plant was on fire, black smoke coiling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to chase them. During those days, moods swept through the city like weather: swift fear, anxiety, indignation at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate look-ups and references that translation demands. Outside, shockwaves blew windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the furniture lay ruined, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an stand, declining to let quiet and dust have the final say. Transforming Sorrow A photograph circulated online of a 23-year-old poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her verse went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between alleyways, yelling a name. People said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all translating, in our own way: turning destruction into picture, demise into verse, mourning into longing. The Craft as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of 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 continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing. During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond a skill: it was an act of resistance, of remaining, 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 confinement, asking for more books, insisting that translation become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, aspiration, rigor, support, and symbol” all at once. A Scarred Work And then came the image. I spotted it on a news site and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, damaged but intact, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained 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 enduring. I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, determined refusal to be silenced.
Among the debris of a collapsed building, a particular sight stayed with me: a tome I had translated from English to Farsi, resting partly concealed in dirt and soot. Its front was shredded and smudged, its leaves bent and burned, but it was still legible. Still communicating. A Metropolis Amid Bombardment Two days earlier, projectiles began striking the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, violent blasts. The web was completely cut off. I was in my flat, translating a book about what it means to carry language across tongues, and the morals and concerns of inhabiting another’s narrative. As structures came down, I sat editing a text that contended, in its subtle way, for the persistence of purpose. Everything ceased. A project my publishing house had been about to send to press was halted when the printing house closed. Bookstores closed one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the bookshelves in my apartment, holding dictionaries, valuable volumes I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night. Distance and Devastation My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous towns – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a photo: in the distance, a plant was on fire, black smoke coiling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to chase them. During those days, moods swept through the city like weather: swift fear, anxiety, indignation at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate look-ups and references that translation demands. Outside, shockwaves blew windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the furniture lay ruined, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an stand, declining to let quiet and dust have the final say. Transforming Sorrow A photograph circulated online of a 23-year-old poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her verse went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between alleyways, yelling a name. People said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some buried memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all translating, in our own way: turning destruction into picture, demise into verse, mourning into longing. The Craft as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of 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 continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing. During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond a skill: it was an act of resistance, of remaining, 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 confinement, asking for more books, insisting that translation become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a fact, aspiration, rigor, support, and symbol” all at once. A Scarred Work And then came the image. I spotted it on a news site and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, damaged but intact, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained 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 enduring. I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, determined refusal to be silenced.