đ Share this article Among those Devastated Remains of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Book I Had Rendered Within the debris of a fallen structure, a solitary vision lingered with me: a book I had rendered from the English language to Farsi, resting partially covered in dirt and soot. Its cover was torn and dirtied, its leaves curled and singed, but it was still readable. Still uttering words. A City Under Assault Two days earlier, missiles began striking the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, forceful detonations. The web was completely cut off. I was in my residence, working on a book about what it means to carry words across tongues, and the ethics and anxieties of taking on anotherâs narrative. As edifices came down, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the persistence of purpose. Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to send to press was halted when the printer closed. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldnât stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, stocked with reference books, valuable books I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That library was my life's work, and I didnât know if I, or it, would survive the night. Dispersal and Grief My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas â places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a photo: in the faraway, a plant was on fire, thick smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to pursue them. During those days, moods moved through the city like a front: swift terror, anxiety, righteous anger at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate look-ups and materials that translation demands. Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their casings; at a family member's house, every pane was broken, the furniture lay broken, objects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an stand, choosing not to let quiet and dust have the final say. Converting Pain A photograph was shared digitally of a young artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral next to her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an older woman hurrying between alleyways, yelling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some deep-seated recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: changing ruin into image, loss into lines, grief into quest. Translation as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet continued working until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all desired â seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for. During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond an art form: it was an act of resistance, of holding one's ground, of persisting. One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his prison cell, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his âpredominant activityâ. For him, translation was â as the author puts it â âa reality, aspiration, rigor, anchor, and symbolâ all at once. A Marked Work And then came the image. I noticed it on a news site and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, scarred but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, drained of life among the rubble and debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent â scarred, but surviving. I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that âall translation is a act with consequencesâ, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: âthis voice had significanceâ. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, determined refusal to disappear.
Within the debris of a fallen structure, a solitary vision lingered with me: a book I had rendered from the English language to Farsi, resting partially covered in dirt and soot. Its cover was torn and dirtied, its leaves curled and singed, but it was still readable. Still uttering words. A City Under Assault Two days earlier, missiles began striking the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, forceful detonations. The web was completely cut off. I was in my residence, working on a book about what it means to carry words across tongues, and the ethics and anxieties of taking on anotherâs narrative. As edifices came down, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its quiet way, for the persistence of purpose. Everything halted. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to send to press was halted when the printer closed. Shops closed one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldnât stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, stocked with reference books, valuable books I had spent years collecting and every book I had ever translated. That library was my life's work, and I didnât know if I, or it, would survive the night. Dispersal and Grief My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas â places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a photo: in the faraway, a plant was on fire, thick smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to pursue them. During those days, moods moved through the city like a front: swift terror, anxiety, righteous anger at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the psychological cost, the attack eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the immediate look-ups and materials that translation demands. Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their casings; at a family member's house, every pane was broken, the furniture lay broken, objects scattered throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an stand, choosing not to let quiet and dust have the final say. Converting Pain A photograph was shared digitally of a young artist who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went viral next to her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an older woman hurrying between alleyways, yelling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some deep-seated recollection. She was searching for a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: changing ruin into image, loss into lines, grief into quest. Translation as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet continued working until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all desired â seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for. During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond an art form: it was an act of resistance, of holding one's ground, of persisting. One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his prison cell, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his âpredominant activityâ. For him, translation was â as the author puts it â âa reality, aspiration, rigor, anchor, and symbolâ all at once. A Marked Work And then came the image. I noticed it on a news site and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, scarred but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, drained of life among the rubble and debris. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent â scarred, but surviving. I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that âall translation is a act with consequencesâ, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: âthis voice had significanceâ. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, determined refusal to disappear.