🔗 Share this article Within those Bombed-Out Debris of an Apartment Block, I Saw a Book I’d Rendered In the debris of a collapsed structure, a particular image lingered with me: a tome I had converted from the English language to Farsi, resting partly concealed in dust and soot. Its jacket was torn and stained, its sheets curled and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking. A Metropolis Under Bombardment Two days before, rockets started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, violent blasts. The digital network was totally disconnected. I was in my residence, working on a text about what it means to transport language across languages, and the principles and concerns of inhabiting someone else's voice. As edifices came down, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the persistence of purpose. Everything halted. A project my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the printing house ceased operations. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, holding reference books, valuable books I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night. Dispersal and Devastation My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous areas – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a image: in the background, a industrial site was on fire, dark smoke curling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly far away, and peril seemed to chase them. During those days, feelings moved through the city like a storm: sudden fear, apprehension, righteous anger at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the personal impact, the attack destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and sources that the work demands. Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their casings; at a family member's house, every window was broken, the belongings lay damaged, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an stand, choosing not to let quiet and dust have the ultimate victory. Translating Grief A picture was shared digitally of a young poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her poem went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between passages, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated remembrance. She was searching for a child who would never come home. We were all transforming, in our own way: transforming devastation into art, demise into verse, mourning into quest. The Craft as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself rendering a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth reaching toward. During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond literary craft: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of enduring. One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his confinement, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, discipline, support, and symbol” all at once. An Enduring Legacy And then came the image. I spotted it on a news site and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, scarred but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained of life among the concrete and ruins. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but enduring. I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else falls away. It is a persistent, determined declination to be silenced.
In the debris of a collapsed structure, a particular image lingered with me: a tome I had converted from the English language to Farsi, resting partly concealed in dust and soot. Its jacket was torn and stained, its sheets curled and scorched, but it was still decipherable. Still speaking. A Metropolis Under Bombardment Two days before, rockets started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just abrupt, violent blasts. The digital network was totally disconnected. I was in my residence, working on a text about what it means to transport language across languages, and the principles and concerns of inhabiting someone else's voice. As edifices came down, I sat editing a text that suggested, in its subtle way, for the persistence of purpose. Everything halted. A project my publisher had been about to go to print was stranded when the printing house ceased operations. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the blasts were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldn’t stop worrying about the library in my apartment, holding reference books, valuable books I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever worked on. That library was my lifework, and I didn’t know if I, or it, would endure the night. Dispersal and Devastation My companion left with her parents for what they thought would be less dangerous areas – places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a image: in the background, a industrial site was on fire, dark smoke curling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly far away, and peril seemed to chase them. During those days, feelings moved through the city like a storm: sudden fear, apprehension, righteous anger at the wrong, then apathy. Beyond the personal impact, the attack destroyed my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and sources that the work demands. Outside, concussive forces ripped windows from their casings; at a family member's house, every window was broken, the belongings lay damaged, objects spread throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, creating at an stand, choosing not to let quiet and dust have the ultimate victory. Translating Grief A picture was shared digitally of a young poet who was lost when missiles struck a building. Her poem went spread rapidly next to her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an elderly woman hurrying between passages, shouting a name. Neighbours said she had lost a son in a war over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated remembrance. She was searching for a child who would never come home. We were all transforming, in our own way: transforming devastation into art, demise into verse, mourning into quest. The Craft as Defiance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself rendering a children’s tale about a king whose daughter will recover only if she can possess the moon. Though written for children, it carried profound meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet continued producing until the end of his life, understood something about aiming at the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the calm we all desired – seemingly out of reach, yet still worth reaching toward. During those nights, I understood translation as something beyond literary craft: it was an act of defiance, of holding one's ground, of enduring. One day, in broad sunlight, blasts hit a prison; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a political thinker in his confinement, asking for more books, insisting that language study become his “main activity”. For him, translation was – as the author puts it – “a reality, hope, discipline, support, and symbol” all at once. An Enduring Legacy And then came the image. I spotted it on a news site and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old works, scarred but whole, my name printed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been monochrome, drained of life among the concrete and ruins. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent – scarred, but enduring. I stared at the image for a long time. The author writes that “all translation is a statement”, but I had never felt the complete significance of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: “this voice was important”. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them endure when everything else falls away. It is a persistent, determined declination to be silenced.