đ Share this article Within the Bombed-Out Remains of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Volume I Had Translated Within the debris of a destroyed apartment block, a solitary vision remained with me: a book I had translated from the English language to Persian, lying partially covered in dust and soot. Its front was torn and dirtied, its leaves curled and burned, but it was still legible. Still speaking. A City Amid Bombardment Two days earlier, missiles commenced attacking the city. There were no alarms, just abrupt, violent explosions. The web was completely severed. I was in my apartment, working on a book about what it means to move words across tongues, and the ethics and anxieties of occupying someone else's voice. As edifices came down, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its understated way, for the endurance of meaning. Everything stopped. A project my publisher had been about to publish was stranded when the facility closed. Bookstores closed one by one. One night, when the blasts were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldnât stop dwelling on the shelves in my apartment, stocked with reference books, rare volumes I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my career's work, and I didnât know if I, or it, would survive the night. Dispersal and Devastation My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous towns â places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the distance, a factory was on fire, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and threat seemed to chase them. During those days, feelings swept through the city like a storm: swift fear, unease, righteous anger at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the attack eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and materials that translation demands. Outside, blast waves blew windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every pane was shattered, the furniture lay damaged, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an easel, declining to let silence and dirt have the ultimate victory. Translating Pain A picture spread digitally of a 23-year-old writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an aged woman hurrying between passages, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some repressed memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all transforming, in our own way: changing ruin into art, death into poetry, mourning into search. The Work as Persistence A week after the attacks began, still amidst ruin, I found myself working on a childrenâs tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet kept producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for â seemingly out of reach, yet still worth reaching toward. During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of holding on. One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his prison cell, asking for more resources, insisting that translation become his âpredominant activityâ. For him, translation was â as the author puts it â âa fact, aspiration, rigor, support, and metaphorâ all at once. A Marked Voice And then came the picture. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible â scarred, but enduring. I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that âall translation is a statementâ, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: âthis voice had significanceâ. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, stubborn rejection to vanish.
Within the debris of a destroyed apartment block, a solitary vision remained with me: a book I had translated from the English language to Persian, lying partially covered in dust and soot. Its front was torn and dirtied, its leaves curled and burned, but it was still legible. Still speaking. A City Amid Bombardment Two days earlier, missiles commenced attacking the city. There were no alarms, just abrupt, violent explosions. The web was completely severed. I was in my apartment, working on a book about what it means to move words across tongues, and the ethics and anxieties of occupying someone else's voice. As edifices came down, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its understated way, for the endurance of meaning. Everything stopped. A project my publisher had been about to publish was stranded when the facility closed. Bookstores closed one by one. One night, when the blasts were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldnât stop dwelling on the shelves in my apartment, stocked with reference books, rare volumes I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my career's work, and I didnât know if I, or it, would survive the night. Dispersal and Devastation My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous towns â places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the distance, a factory was on fire, thick smoke spiraling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and threat seemed to chase them. During those days, feelings swept through the city like a storm: swift fear, unease, righteous anger at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the attack eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and materials that translation demands. Outside, blast waves blew windows from their frames; at a family member's house, every pane was shattered, the furniture lay damaged, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an easel, declining to let silence and dirt have the ultimate victory. Translating Pain A picture spread digitally of a 23-year-old writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an aged woman hurrying between passages, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some repressed memory. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all transforming, in our own way: changing ruin into art, death into poetry, mourning into search. The Work as Persistence A week after the attacks began, still amidst ruin, I found myself working on a childrenâs tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet kept producing until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for â seemingly out of reach, yet still worth reaching toward. During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of holding on. One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his prison cell, asking for more resources, insisting that translation become his âpredominant activityâ. For him, translation was â as the author puts it â âa fact, aspiration, rigor, support, and metaphorâ all at once. A Marked Voice And then came the picture. I noticed it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the debris and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made visible â scarred, but enduring. I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that âall translation is a statementâ, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: âthis voice had significanceâ. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a subtle, stubborn rejection to vanish.