🔗 Share this article Amid the Bombed-Out Remains of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Book I’d Rendered In the rubble of a fallen building, a particular vision remained with me: a volume I had rendered from English to Persian, lying half-buried in dust and soot. Its cover was ripped and smudged, its pages curled and burned, but it was still decipherable. Still uttering words. A City Under Bombardment Two days earlier, missiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, forceful explosions. The web was entirely cut off. I was in my apartment, rendering a work about what it means to move text across languages, and the principles and concerns of taking on another’s narrative. As structures fell, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the endurance of significance. Everything stopped. A project my publisher had been about to send to press was stuck when the printing house closed. Retailers closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, stocked with lexicons, valuable editions I had spent years gathering 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. Separation and Devastation My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the background, a industrial site was burning, thick smoke coiling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to follow them. During those days, moods passed over the city like weather: instant dread, anxiety, indignation at the injustice, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and sources that translation demands. Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the belongings lay ruined, personal effects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an stand, choosing not to let silence and dirt have the final say. Translating Grief A picture circulated on social media of a young writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman dashing between alleys, yelling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a war 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: turning devastation into art, demise into lines, sorrow into search. Translation as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself working on a story for young readers 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 continued creating until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all yearned for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for. During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of defiance, 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 cell, asking for more resources, insisting that language study become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, hope, practice, foundation, and metaphor” all at once. A Scarred Work And then came the image. I saw it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, damaged but surviving, my name displayed 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 wreckage. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but persisting. I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, 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 persist when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, unyielding refusal to vanish.
In the rubble of a fallen building, a particular vision remained with me: a volume I had rendered from English to Persian, lying half-buried in dust and soot. Its cover was ripped and smudged, its pages curled and burned, but it was still decipherable. Still uttering words. A City Under Bombardment Two days earlier, missiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, forceful explosions. The web was entirely cut off. I was in my apartment, rendering a work about what it means to move text across languages, and the principles and concerns of taking on another’s narrative. As structures fell, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the endurance of significance. Everything stopped. A project my publisher had been about to send to press was stuck when the printing house closed. Retailers closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop thinking about the library in my apartment, stocked with lexicons, valuable editions I had spent years gathering 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. Separation and Devastation My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the background, a industrial site was burning, thick smoke coiling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and danger seemed to follow them. During those days, moods passed over the city like weather: instant dread, anxiety, indignation at the injustice, then apathy. Beyond the emotional toll, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick look-ups and sources that translation demands. Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the belongings lay ruined, personal effects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an stand, choosing not to let silence and dirt have the final say. Translating Grief A picture circulated on social media of a young writer who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman dashing between alleys, yelling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a war 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: turning devastation into art, demise into lines, sorrow into search. Translation as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself working on a story for young readers 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 continued creating until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all yearned for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for. During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than an art form: it was an act of defiance, 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 cell, asking for more resources, insisting that language study become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, hope, practice, foundation, and metaphor” all at once. A Scarred Work And then came the image. I saw it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, damaged but surviving, my name displayed 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 wreckage. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but persisting. I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, 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 persist when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, unyielding refusal to vanish.