🔗 Share this article Amid those Devastated Debris of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Volume I’d Rendered In the wreckage of a fallen building, a solitary sight remained with me: a tome I had rendered from the English language to Farsi, resting partially covered in dirt and soot. Its jacket was ripped and smudged, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still communicating. A Metropolis Amid Bombardment Two days before, rockets began striking the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, violent detonations. The digital network was totally severed. I was in my residence, rendering a work about what it means to move text across cultures, and the morals and anxieties of inhabiting another’s perspective. As buildings came down, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the endurance of purpose. Everything stopped. A project my publishing house had been about to go to print was stuck when the printer closed. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the booms were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, holding lexicons, rare books I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night. Separation and Grief My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be safer locations – 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 photo: in the distance, a industrial site was burning, black smoke coiling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to follow them. During those days, emotions moved through the city like weather: instant dread, apprehension, indignation at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the psychological cost, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and materials that translation demands. Outside, shockwaves tore windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every window was destroyed, the furniture lay damaged, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an stand, refusing to let quiet and dust have the last word. Translating Sorrow A photograph spread online of a young poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her verse went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman running between alleyways, shouting a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated remembrance. She was searching for a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: changing devastation into picture, demise into poetry, grief into search. Translation as Resistance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing. During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond a skill: it was an act of defiance, of staying put, of enduring. 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 books, insisting that language study become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, hope, discipline, support, and symbol” all at once. A Marked Work And then came the picture. I noticed it on a news site and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, drained of life among the debris and ruins. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but persisting. I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a act with consequences”, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a subtle, determined declination to disappear.
In the wreckage of a fallen building, a solitary sight remained with me: a tome I had rendered from the English language to Farsi, resting partially covered in dirt and soot. Its jacket was ripped and smudged, its leaves bent and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still communicating. A Metropolis Amid Bombardment Two days before, rockets began striking the city. There were no warnings, just unexpected, violent detonations. The digital network was totally severed. I was in my residence, rendering a work about what it means to move text across cultures, and the morals and anxieties of inhabiting another’s perspective. As buildings came down, I sat polishing a text that contended, in its quiet way, for the endurance of purpose. Everything stopped. A project my publishing house had been about to go to print was stuck when the printer closed. Shops shut one by one. One night, when the booms were too imminent, my family and I rushed down the stairs toward the cellar. I couldn’t stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, holding lexicons, rare books I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever translated. That archive was my career's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would survive the night. Separation and Grief My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be safer locations – 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 photo: in the distance, a industrial site was burning, black smoke coiling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and danger seemed to follow them. During those days, emotions moved through the city like weather: instant dread, apprehension, indignation at the wrong, then numbness. Beyond the psychological cost, the shelling dismantled my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and materials that translation demands. Outside, shockwaves tore windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every window was destroyed, the furniture lay damaged, personal effects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, painting at an stand, refusing to let quiet and dust have the last word. Translating Sorrow A photograph spread online of a young poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her verse went was widely shared alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an elderly woman running between alleyways, shouting a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had triggered some deep-seated remembrance. She was searching for a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: changing devastation into picture, demise into poetry, grief into search. Translation as Resistance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself rendering a fable about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet persisted producing until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the impossible. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all longed for – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth pursuing. During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond a skill: it was an act of defiance, of staying put, of enduring. 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 books, insisting that language study become his “predominant activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a truth, hope, discipline, support, and symbol” all at once. A Marked Work And then came the picture. I noticed it on a news site and saw that, among the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in color, but it might as well have been devoid of color, drained of life among the debris and ruins. For most of my career, I had been anonymous, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen – scarred, but persisting. I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a act with consequences”, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice mattered”. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else disappears. It is a subtle, determined declination to disappear.