đ Share this article Among the Bombed-Out Debris of an Apartment Block, I Encountered a Volume I Had Rendered Within the rubble of a fallen building, a solitary image stayed with me: a volume I had rendered from English to Persian, lying partly concealed in dust and ash. Its front was shredded and stained, its pages curled and burned, but it was still readable. Still speaking. A City Under Attack Two days before, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, powerful detonations. The internet was totally severed. I was in my apartment, translating a text about what it means to transport words across languages, and the principles and anxieties of taking on someone else's voice. As structures fell, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of significance. Everything halted. A manuscript my publisher had been about to publish was halted when the facility shut down. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldnât stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, rare editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That library was my career's work, and I didnât know if I, or it, would make it through the night. Distance and Devastation My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas â places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a picture: in the distance, a factory was ablaze, black smoke curling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to chase them. During those days, moods passed over the city like a storm: swift dread, anxiety, indignation at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and materials that translation demands. Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their casings; at a cousin's house, every window was broken, the furniture lay broken, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an easel, declining to let quiet and debris have the ultimate victory. Converting Sorrow A photograph spread on social media of a young writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing went spread rapidly alongside her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an older woman hurrying between alleys, calling a name. People 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 looking for a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: turning destruction into image, death into poetry, sorrow into longing. The Craft as Resistance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself working on a story for young readers 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 experienced the loss of his sight yet continued working until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired â seemingly impossible, yet still worth pursuing. 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 leader in his cell, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that language study become his âprimary activityâ. For him, translation was â as the author puts it â âa truth, aspiration, rigor, foundation, and analogyâ all at once. A Scarred Voice And then came the image. I saw it on a news site and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, scarred but surviving, 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 debris. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent â scarred, but persisting. I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that âall translation is a act with consequencesâ, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: âthis voice had significanceâ. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a quiet, stubborn rejection to disappear.
Within the rubble of a fallen building, a solitary image stayed with me: a volume I had rendered from English to Persian, lying partly concealed in dust and ash. Its front was shredded and stained, its pages curled and burned, but it was still readable. Still speaking. A City Under Attack Two days before, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no sirens, just unexpected, powerful detonations. The internet was totally severed. I was in my apartment, translating a text about what it means to transport words across languages, and the principles and anxieties of taking on someone else's voice. As structures fell, I sat revising a text that suggested, in its understated way, for the lasting nature of significance. Everything halted. A manuscript my publisher had been about to publish was halted when the facility shut down. Bookstores locked their doors one by one. One night, when the booms were too nearby, my family and I ran down the stairs toward the shelter. I couldnât stop worrying about the shelves in my apartment, filled with dictionaries, rare editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That library was my career's work, and I didnât know if I, or it, would make it through the night. Distance and Devastation My partner left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure areas â places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter went to stay in another city. As her train was leaving, she sent me a picture: in the distance, a factory was ablaze, black smoke curling into the sky. People closest to me were suddenly far away, and danger seemed to chase them. During those days, moods passed over the city like a storm: swift dread, anxiety, indignation at the unfairness, then detachment. Beyond the emotional toll, the attack dismantled my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the quick searches and materials that translation demands. Outside, blast waves ripped windows from their casings; at a cousin's house, every window was broken, the furniture lay broken, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the destruction, working at an easel, declining to let quiet and debris have the ultimate victory. Converting Sorrow A photograph spread on social media of a young writer who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing went spread rapidly alongside her image. On a street where I once bought reference materials, I saw an older woman hurrying between alleys, calling a name. People 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 looking for a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: turning destruction into image, death into poetry, sorrow into longing. The Craft as Resistance A week after the attacks began, still in the midst of devastation, I found myself working on a story for young readers 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 experienced the loss of his sight yet continued working until the end of his life, understood something about striving for the unreachable. I wondered if the moon was the peace we all desired â seemingly impossible, yet still worth pursuing. 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 leader in his cell, asking for more dictionaries, insisting that language study become his âprimary activityâ. For him, translation was â as the author puts it â âa truth, aspiration, rigor, foundation, and analogyâ all at once. A Scarred Voice And then came the image. I saw it on a news site and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old translations, scarred but surviving, 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 debris. For most of my career, I had been invisible, as all translators are. But here was my work made apparent â scarred, but persisting. I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that âall translation is a act with consequencesâ, but I had never felt the full weight of this until then. To translate, even under fire, was to say: âthis voice had significanceâ. It will not be forgotten. To translate is not just to haul stories across languages, but to help them remain when everything else falls away. It is a quiet, stubborn rejection to disappear.