The sight of my work, torn and singed but still legible, made me realise the importance of translating and protecting stories – so they remain when everything else falls away

In the rubble of a collapsed apartment block, a single image stayed with me: a book I had translated from English to Persian, lying half-buried in dust and ash. Its cover was torn and smudged, its pages curled and singed, but it was still legible. Still speaking.

Two days earlier, on 13 June 2025, missiles from Israel began striking Tehran. There were no sirens, just sudden, violent blasts. The internet was completely cut off. I was in my apartment, translating Jhumpa Lahiri’s Translating Myself and Others – a book about what it means to transport words across languages, and the ethics and anxieties of inhabiting another’s voice. As buildings fell, I sat editing a text that argued, in its quiet way, for the endurance of meaning.