🔗 Share this article Among the Ruined Debris of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Book I Had Rendered In the rubble of a fallen building, a particular image remained with me: a tome I had converted from English to Farsi, resting partly concealed in dirt and soot. Its cover was shredded and dirtied, its sheets bent and singed, but it was still readable. Still speaking. An Urban Center Amid Assault Two days before, missiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, forceful blasts. The digital network was totally cut off. I was in my apartment, translating a text about what it means to transport language across languages, and the principles and anxieties of inhabiting another’s perspective. As structures came down, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the lasting nature of significance. Everything ceased. A project my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the facility ceased operations. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop thinking about the bookshelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, rare volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night. Dispersal and Loss My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the background, a factory was ablaze, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to pursue them. During those days, moods moved through the city like a storm: sudden fear, anxiety, righteous anger at the injustice, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and sources that the work demands. Outside, concussive forces tore windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every window was destroyed, the belongings lay damaged, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an stand, declining to let stillness and debris have the final say. Converting Grief A photograph circulated online of a 23-year-old poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went spread rapidly alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an aged woman running between passages, yelling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some buried memory. She was looking for a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: changing destruction into image, demise into poetry, sorrow into search. Translation as Persistence A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by devastation, I found myself rendering a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet kept creating until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for. During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than literary craft: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of persisting. One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his prison cell, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that translation become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, rigor, support, and analogy” all at once. A Marked Legacy And then came the picture. I saw it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but enduring. I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else disappears. It is a persistent, unyielding declination to be silenced.
In the rubble of a fallen building, a particular image remained with me: a tome I had converted from English to Farsi, resting partly concealed in dirt and soot. Its cover was shredded and dirtied, its sheets bent and singed, but it was still readable. Still speaking. An Urban Center Amid Assault Two days before, missiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just sudden, forceful blasts. The digital network was totally cut off. I was in my apartment, translating a text about what it means to transport language across languages, and the principles and anxieties of inhabiting another’s perspective. As structures came down, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the lasting nature of significance. Everything ceased. A project my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the facility ceased operations. Retailers locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too imminent, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the basement. I couldn’t stop thinking about the bookshelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, rare volumes I had spent years accumulating and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my life's work, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would make it through the night. Dispersal and Loss My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be safer areas – places that, days later, were also hit. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a image: in the background, a factory was ablaze, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to pursue them. During those days, moods moved through the city like a storm: sudden fear, anxiety, righteous anger at the injustice, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling eradicated my ability to work. Without power and the internet, I had no access to the quick queries and sources that the work demands. Outside, concussive forces tore windows from their casings; at a relative's house, every window was destroyed, the belongings lay damaged, personal effects strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an stand, declining to let stillness and debris have the final say. Converting Grief A photograph circulated online of a 23-year-old poet who was killed when missiles struck a building. Her poem went spread rapidly alongside her image. On a street where I once bought books, I saw an aged woman running between passages, yelling a name. Locals said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some buried memory. She was looking for a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: changing destruction into image, demise into poetry, sorrow into search. Translation as Persistence A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by devastation, I found myself rendering a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will heal only if she can grasp the moon. Though written for children, it carried significant meaning for me then. The author, who lost his sight yet kept creating until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all longed for – seemingly impossible, yet still worth striving for. During those nights, I understood translation as something greater than literary craft: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of persisting. One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a philosopher in his prison cell, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that translation become his “primary activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, goal, rigor, support, and analogy” all at once. A Marked Legacy And then came the picture. I saw it on a platform and saw that, amid the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but surviving, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, devoid of life among the debris and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but enduring. I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a political act”, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under attack, was to say: “this voice had significance”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to carry stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else disappears. It is a persistent, unyielding declination to be silenced.