đ Share this article Within the Devastated Remains of an Residential Building, I Found a Volume Iâd Translated Within the debris of a collapsed apartment block, a particular sight stayed with me: a volume I had translated from English to Persian, sitting partly concealed in dirt and soot. Its cover was torn and dirtied, its pages curled and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still communicating. An Urban Center Amid Attack Two days earlier, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, violent detonations. The digital network was entirely cut off. I was in my residence, rendering a work about what it means to carry text across tongues, and the ethics and worries of taking on a different perspective. As structures collapsed, I sat revising a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the persistence of significance. Everything stopped. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to go to print was halted when the printer ceased operations. Retailers closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the basement. I couldnât stop thinking about the shelves in my apartment, filled with lexicons, rare editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That collection was my lifework, and I didnât know if I, or it, would make it through the night. Distance and Loss My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations â places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the background, a industrial site was on fire, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to chase them. During those days, emotions passed over the city like a storm: sudden fear, apprehension, moral outrage at the injustice, then numbness. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and references that the craft demands. Outside, shockwaves blew windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every window was broken, the furniture lay broken, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an easel, choosing not to let silence and debris have the final say. Converting Sorrow A picture spread digitally of a 23-year-old poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing went spread rapidly alongside her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an older woman hurrying between alleyways, yelling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: changing destruction into image, death into lines, sorrow into longing. The Craft as Resistance A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by ruin, I found myself translating a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet persisted working until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all longed for â seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for. 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 bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his confinement, asking for more books, insisting that linguistic work become his âpredominant activityâ. For him, translation was â as the author puts it â âa truth, goal, practice, support, and analogyâ all at once. A Scarred Legacy And then came the image. I saw it on a website and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but whole, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, stripped of life among the concrete and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen â scarred, but surviving. I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that âall translation is a statementâ, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: âthis voice matteredâ. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, unyielding declination to be silenced.
Within the debris of a collapsed apartment block, a particular sight stayed with me: a volume I had translated from English to Persian, sitting partly concealed in dirt and soot. Its cover was torn and dirtied, its pages curled and singed, but it was still decipherable. Still communicating. An Urban Center Amid Attack Two days earlier, projectiles started hitting the city. There were no warnings, just sudden, violent detonations. The digital network was entirely cut off. I was in my residence, rendering a work about what it means to carry text across tongues, and the ethics and worries of taking on a different perspective. As structures collapsed, I sat revising a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the persistence of significance. Everything stopped. A manuscript my publishing house had been about to go to print was halted when the printer ceased operations. Retailers closed one by one. One night, when the explosions were too close, my family and I hurried down the stairs toward the basement. I couldnât stop thinking about the shelves in my apartment, filled with lexicons, rare editions I had spent years gathering and every book I had ever translated. That collection was my lifework, and I didnât know if I, or it, would make it through the night. Distance and Loss My spouse left with her parents for what they thought would be more secure locations â places that, days later, were also struck. My daughter departed to stay in another city. As her train was departing, she sent me a picture: in the background, a industrial site was on fire, dark smoke spiraling into the sky. People nearest me were suddenly somewhere else, and peril seemed to chase them. During those days, emotions passed over the city like a storm: sudden fear, apprehension, moral outrage at the injustice, then numbness. Beyond the emotional toll, the shelling eradicated my ability to work. Without electricity and the internet, I had no access to the instant look-ups and references that the craft demands. Outside, shockwaves blew windows from their sashes; at a family member's house, every window was broken, the furniture lay broken, household items strewn throughout the rooms. When I visited, a woman sat before the wreckage, working at an easel, choosing not to let silence and debris have the final say. Converting Sorrow A picture spread digitally of a 23-year-old poet who was died when missiles struck a building. Her writing went spread rapidly alongside her image. On a street where I once bought dictionaries, I saw an older woman hurrying between alleyways, yelling a name. Locals said she had mourned a son in a conflict over 30 years ago, and now, the bombs had stirred some deep-seated recollection. She was seeking a child who would never come home. We were all converting, in our own way: changing destruction into image, death into lines, sorrow into longing. The Craft as Resistance A week after the attacks began, still surrounded by ruin, I found myself translating a story for young readers about a king whose daughter will get better only if she can hold the moon. Though written for children, it carried deep meaning for me then. The author, who experienced the loss of his sight yet persisted working until the end of his life, understood something about reaching for the unattainable. I wondered if the moon was the tranquility we all longed for â seemingly out of reach, yet still worth striving for. 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 bright sunlight, blasts hit a facility; in those same hours, I was translating passages about a leader in his confinement, asking for more books, insisting that linguistic work become his âpredominant activityâ. For him, translation was â as the author puts it â âa truth, goal, practice, support, and analogyâ all at once. A Scarred Legacy And then came the image. I saw it on a website and saw that, within the ruins of another apartment block, lay one of my old renditions, scarred but whole, my name displayed on the cover. The image was in colour, but it might as well have been devoid of color, stripped of life among the concrete and debris. For most of my career, I had been unseen, as all translators are. But here was my work made seen â scarred, but surviving. I looked at the image for a long time. The author writes that âall translation is a statementâ, but I had never felt the true gravity of this until then. To translate, even under bombardment, was to say: âthis voice matteredâ. It will not be obliterated. To translate is not just to transport stories across languages, but to help them persist when everything else crumbles. It is a persistent, unyielding declination to be silenced.