🔗 Share this article Amid those Bombed-Out Remains of an Residential Building, I Saw a Book I’d Rendered In the wreckage of a collapsed structure, a particular vision lingered with me: a volume I had converted from the English language to Farsi, lying partially covered in dirt and soot. Its cover was torn and stained, its pages curled and scorched, but it was still readable. Still uttering words. A City Amid Bombardment Two days earlier, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, violent detonations. The digital network was completely disconnected. I was in my flat, rendering a text about what it means to move text across tongues, and the principles and worries of inhabiting someone else's narrative. As buildings collapsed, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its understated way, for the persistence of purpose. Everything ceased. A manuscript my publisher had been about to publish was halted when the printing house shut down. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the booms were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, filled with lexicons, valuable volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night. Dispersal and Devastation My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a picture: in the faraway, a industrial site was on fire, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to chase them. During those days, moods moved through the city like a storm: swift dread, unease, righteous anger at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and materials that the craft demands. Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their sashes; at a relative's house, every window was broken, the furniture lay ruined, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, working at an easel, choosing not to let quiet and debris have the final say. Translating Sorrow A photograph was shared on social media of a 23-year-old artist who was died when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an elderly woman running between alleyways, shouting a name. People said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some repressed memory. She was looking for a child who would never come home. We were all translating, in our own way: changing devastation into image, demise into poetry, sorrow into longing. The Craft as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by destruction, I found myself translating a children’s tale 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 persisted creating until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for. During those nights, I understood translation as something more than a skill: it was an act of perseverance, of holding one's ground, of holding on. One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more resources, insisting that linguistic work become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, aspiration, discipline, anchor, and symbol” all at once. A Marked Work And then came the picture. I saw it on a website and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, damaged but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, drained 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 apparent – 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 bombardment, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, determined rejection to disappear.
In the wreckage of a collapsed structure, a particular vision lingered with me: a volume I had converted from the English language to Farsi, lying partially covered in dirt and soot. Its cover was torn and stained, its pages curled and scorched, but it was still readable. Still uttering words. A City Amid Bombardment Two days earlier, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no alarms, just sudden, violent detonations. The digital network was completely disconnected. I was in my flat, rendering a text about what it means to move text across tongues, and the principles and worries of inhabiting someone else's narrative. As buildings collapsed, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its understated way, for the persistence of purpose. Everything ceased. A manuscript my publisher had been about to publish was halted when the printing house shut down. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the booms were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, filled with lexicons, valuable volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That collection was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night. Dispersal and Devastation My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was pulling out, she sent me a picture: in the faraway, a industrial site was on fire, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to chase them. During those days, moods moved through the city like a storm: swift dread, unease, righteous anger at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the personal impact, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and materials that the craft demands. Outside, concussive forces blew windows from their sashes; at a relative's house, every window was broken, the furniture lay ruined, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, working at an easel, choosing not to let quiet and debris have the final say. Translating Sorrow A photograph was shared on social media of a 23-year-old artist who was died when missiles struck a building. Her verse went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an elderly woman running between alleyways, shouting a name. People said she had lost a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some repressed memory. She was looking for a child who would never come home. We were all translating, in our own way: changing devastation into image, demise into poetry, sorrow into longing. The Craft as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by destruction, I found myself translating a children’s tale 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 persisted creating until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for. During those nights, I understood translation as something more than a skill: it was an act of perseverance, of holding one's ground, of holding on. One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his confinement, asking for more resources, insisting that linguistic work become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, aspiration, discipline, anchor, and symbol” all at once. A Marked Work And then came the picture. I saw it on a website and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, damaged but surviving, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been black and white, drained 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 apparent – 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 bombardment, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, determined rejection to disappear.