🔗 Share this article Among those Devastated Debris of an Residential Building, I Encountered a Volume I Had Translated Within the debris of a fallen apartment block, a solitary vision lingered with me: a volume I had rendered from English to Persian, lying half-buried in dirt and ash. Its front was torn and smudged, its sheets bent and singed, but it was still legible. Still uttering words. A City Under Assault Two days earlier, rockets started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, powerful detonations. The web was completely severed. I was in my apartment, working on a text about what it means to transport text across languages, and the principles and worries of inhabiting another’s narrative. As edifices came down, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the persistence of purpose. Everything ceased. A project my publisher had been about to send to press was stranded when the facility ceased operations. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, valuable editions I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That library was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night. Distance and Devastation My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer towns – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter departed 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 spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to follow them. During those days, emotions swept through the city like weather: sudden terror, apprehension, moral outrage at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and sources that the craft demands. Outside, blast waves tore windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every sheet of glass was broken, the possessions lay damaged, household items scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an easel, choosing not to let silence and debris have the last word. Transforming Pain A image circulated digitally of a 23-year-old poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her verse went spread rapidly alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an aged woman dashing between alleys, yelling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some deep-seated remembrance. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all transforming, in our own way: transforming devastation into art, death into poetry, sorrow into search. The Work as Persistence A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, I found myself working on a fable about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can possess 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 unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all desired – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for. During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than a skill: it was an act of resistance, of staying put, of holding on. One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his cell, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that translation become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, aspiration, rigor, anchor, and metaphor” all at once. A Marked Legacy And then came the photograph. I saw it on a platform and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but surviving. 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 complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a subtle, unyielding rejection to disappear.
Within the debris of a fallen apartment block, a solitary vision lingered with me: a volume I had rendered from English to Persian, lying half-buried in dirt and ash. Its front was torn and smudged, its sheets bent and singed, but it was still legible. Still uttering words. A City Under Assault Two days earlier, rockets started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, powerful detonations. The web was completely severed. I was in my apartment, working on a text about what it means to transport text across languages, and the principles and worries of inhabiting another’s narrative. As edifices came down, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the persistence of purpose. Everything ceased. A project my publisher had been about to send to press was stranded when the facility ceased operations. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, valuable editions I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That library was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night. Distance and Devastation My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer towns – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter departed 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 spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to follow them. During those days, emotions swept through the city like weather: sudden terror, apprehension, moral outrage at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the bombardment dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and sources that the craft demands. Outside, blast waves tore windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every sheet of glass was broken, the possessions lay damaged, household items scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an easel, choosing not to let silence and debris have the last word. Transforming Pain A image circulated digitally of a 23-year-old poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her verse went spread rapidly alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an aged woman dashing between alleys, yelling a name. Neighbours said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some deep-seated remembrance. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all transforming, in our own way: transforming devastation into art, death into poetry, sorrow into search. The Work as Persistence A week after the attacks began, still amidst destruction, I found myself working on a fable about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can possess 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 unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all desired – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for. During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than a skill: it was an act of resistance, of staying put, of holding on. One day, in bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his cell, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that translation become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, aspiration, rigor, anchor, and metaphor” all at once. A Marked Legacy And then came the photograph. I saw it on a platform and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but surviving. 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 complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a subtle, unyielding rejection to disappear.