🔗 Share this article Amid the Bombed-Out Remains of an Residential Building, I Found a Volume I’d Rendered Within the debris of a destroyed structure, a solitary vision stayed with me: a volume I had translated from English to Persian, lying partially covered in dust and soot. Its front was torn and dirtied, its pages curled and singed, but it was still readable. Still communicating. A City Under Assault Two days prior, projectiles commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, forceful explosions. The internet was totally disconnected. I was in my flat, translating a work about what it means to carry text across languages, and the principles and concerns of taking on another’s narrative. As structures fell, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its understated way, for the persistence of significance. Everything halted. A manuscript my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the printer closed. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, holding lexicons, rare volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night. Distance and Devastation My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be safer towns – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the distance, a factory was ablaze, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to follow them. During those days, moods passed over the city like a storm: sudden dread, unease, righteous anger at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and sources that the craft demands. Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the belongings lay ruined, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an easel, declining to let quiet and dust have the final say. Converting Pain A image was shared on social media of a 23-year-old poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went spread rapidly with her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman hurrying between passages, shouting a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: transforming devastation into image, loss into verse, mourning into longing. The Work as Persistence A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of destruction, I found myself translating a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted creating until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all yearned for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing. During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond an art form: it was an act of perseverance, of remaining, of holding on. One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his cell, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, aspiration, practice, foundation, and symbol” all at once. A Scarred Work And then came the image. I spotted it on a news site and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, scarred but intact, my name shown on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained of life among the rubble and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but surviving. I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, stubborn rejection to be silenced.
Within the debris of a destroyed structure, a solitary vision stayed with me: a volume I had translated from English to Persian, lying partially covered in dust and soot. Its front was torn and dirtied, its pages curled and singed, but it was still readable. Still communicating. A City Under Assault Two days prior, projectiles commenced attacking the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, forceful explosions. The internet was totally disconnected. I was in my flat, translating a work about what it means to carry text across languages, and the principles and concerns of taking on another’s narrative. As structures fell, I sat polishing a text that suggested, in its understated way, for the persistence of significance. Everything halted. A manuscript my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the printer closed. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the library in my apartment, holding lexicons, rare volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That archive was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night. Distance and Devastation My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be safer towns – places that, days later, were also targeted. My daughter travelled to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the distance, a factory was ablaze, black smoke spiraling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly far away, and threat seemed to follow them. During those days, moods passed over the city like a storm: sudden dread, unease, righteous anger at the wrong, then detachment. Beyond the personal impact, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the immediate searches and sources that the craft demands. Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every sheet of glass was shattered, the belongings lay ruined, household items spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an easel, declining to let quiet and dust have the final say. Converting Pain A image was shared on social media of a 23-year-old poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her writing went spread rapidly with her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an aged woman hurrying between passages, shouting a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had awakened some buried recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: transforming devastation into image, loss into verse, mourning into longing. The Work as Persistence A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of destruction, I found myself translating a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted creating until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all yearned for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing. During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond an art form: it was an act of perseverance, of remaining, of holding on. One day, in full sunlight, blasts hit a detention center; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his cell, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that language study become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, aspiration, practice, foundation, and symbol” all at once. A Scarred Work And then came the image. I spotted it on a news site and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, scarred but intact, my name shown on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained of life among the rubble and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but surviving. I gazed upon the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else crumbles. It is a quiet, stubborn rejection to be silenced.