đ Share this article Among the Devastated Remains of an Apartment Block, I Found a Volume I Had Rendered Within the wreckage of a fallen structure, a single sight remained with me: a book I had rendered from the English language to Persian, lying partly concealed in dust and ash. Its front was shredded and stained, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking. A Metropolis Amid Assault Two days prior, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, powerful explosions. The web was entirely severed. I was in my apartment, working on a work about what it means to move text across languages, and the morals and anxieties of inhabiting anotherâs perspective. As buildings fell, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the endurance of meaning. Everything stopped. A manuscript my publisher had been about to send to press was stranded when the printer closed. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the basement. I couldnât stop thinking about the shelves in my apartment, holding dictionaries, valuable volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That library was my career's work, and I didnât know if I, or it, would survive the night. Separation and Devastation My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be safer towns 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 distance, a industrial site was burning, black smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to follow them. During those days, feelings moved through the city like a front: sudden dread, apprehension, moral outrage at the injustice, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the attack destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant searches and materials that translation demands. Outside, shockwaves tore windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every sheet of glass was destroyed, the possessions lay broken, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an stand, choosing not to let silence and dirt have the final say. Transforming Grief A photograph was shared on social media of a 23-year-old artist who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman running between alleys, yelling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried remembrance. She was searching for a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: changing destruction into art, death into lines, sorrow into longing. Translation as Persistence A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself translating a fable about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted creating until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all yearned for â seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for. During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than a skill: it was an act of perseverance, of staying put, of holding on. One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his confinement, asking for more resources, insisting that translation become his âmain activityâ. For him, translation was â as the author puts it â âa truth, goal, rigor, foundation, and symbolâ all at once. A Marked Legacy And then came the picture. I saw it on a platform and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, damaged but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been monochrome, stripped of life among the concrete and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent â scarred, but surviving. I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that âall translation is a statementâ, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: âthis voice matteredâ. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else falls away. It is a persistent, determined rejection to disappear.
Within the wreckage of a fallen structure, a single sight remained with me: a book I had rendered from the English language to Persian, lying partly concealed in dust and ash. Its front was shredded and stained, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking. A Metropolis Amid Assault Two days prior, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, powerful explosions. The web was entirely severed. I was in my apartment, working on a work about what it means to move text across languages, and the morals and anxieties of inhabiting anotherâs perspective. As buildings fell, I sat polishing a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the endurance of meaning. Everything stopped. A manuscript my publisher had been about to send to press was stranded when the printer closed. Shops locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the basement. I couldnât stop thinking about the shelves in my apartment, holding dictionaries, valuable volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That library was my career's work, and I didnât know if I, or it, would survive the night. Separation and Devastation My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be safer towns 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 distance, a industrial site was burning, black smoke curling into the sky. People dearest to me were suddenly elsewhere, and threat seemed to follow them. During those days, feelings moved through the city like a front: sudden dread, apprehension, moral outrage at the injustice, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the attack destroyed my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the instant searches and materials that translation demands. Outside, shockwaves tore windows from their frames; at a cousin's house, every sheet of glass was destroyed, the possessions lay broken, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the ruins, creating at an stand, choosing not to let silence and dirt have the final say. Transforming Grief A photograph was shared on social media of a 23-year-old artist who was died when missiles struck a building. Her poem went viral with her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an aged woman running between alleys, yelling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried remembrance. She was searching for a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: changing destruction into art, death into lines, sorrow into longing. Translation as Persistence A week after the attacks began, still amidst devastation, I found myself translating a fable about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted creating until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all yearned for â seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for. During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than a skill: it was an act of perseverance, of staying put, of holding on. One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his confinement, asking for more resources, insisting that translation become his âmain activityâ. For him, translation was â as the author puts it â âa truth, goal, rigor, foundation, and symbolâ all at once. A Marked Legacy And then came the picture. I saw it on a platform and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, damaged but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been monochrome, stripped of life among the concrete and wreckage. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent â scarred, but surviving. I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that âall translation is a statementâ, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: âthis voice matteredâ. It will not be erased. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else falls away. It is a persistent, determined rejection to disappear.