In the days and weeks leading to writing this note, I watched a few films from Peter Mettler’s series Nothing but Time. The retrospective was curated by my dear friend José Teodoro, a writer, artist, and, I would say, a translator—not in the strict sense of language, though he is fluent there too, but in the sense of someone who moves between worlds, mediums, and meanings. The opportunity to experience these films at the TIFF Cinematheque was an act of generosity. A gift from friendship, from cinema, from time itself. These were not just screenings; Mettler creates landscapes that erode the boundaries of the physical and metaphysical, and are invitations into a way of seeing, and being with the world. Time seems to move differently within them, and without, less as a measure and more as a presence—elusive, and alive. 

       In a Q&A, Peter said that his filmmaking—and his life— had been a pursuit of wonder and water. The way a river flows, he said. Finding the path of least resistance. 

       I’ve been thinking about that ever since. Wonder and water. What does it mean to follow the path of least resistance—not as avoidance, but as attention? What does it mean to let something hold you? And I wonder, genuinely, if translation has been that for me. For us. Not merely an act of converting words, but an attunement. A listening.

       I didn’t choose translation, exactly. It happened upon me—or I happened upon it. When I was in grade nine, my mother enrolled me in an intro English class at the Simin Institute on Felesteen Street (formerly named Kakh Street, meaning palace) in Tehran. She enrolled herself too, just to ensure I’d go. What mothers do to subvert reluctance. What love does. What began in resistance turned into devotion: a restless, unending curiosity for language—mine and others’.

       That led me to study English translation and linguistics in Iran, and to become a translator of literary nonfiction, from English into Persian. Later, as happenstance would have it again, I became an interpreter and then legal worker, this time for those seeking refuge in Canada. Out of that shift in direction, and calendars, and countries, the keen eyes and ears of the most audacious teachers in the Traductologie program at York University, and a transformative residency at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre in 2010, came translating into English. Another threshold. Another body of water to cross. And the crossing, rarely quiet, always embodied. 

       I began this note with the intent not to make it personal. But ultimately, isn’t everything? Every word I translated led me back to a self shaped in relation. And in this, I’ve had the immense luck of encountering mentors, and friends who (in)formed not only my understanding of language, but my sense of what it means to carry and be carried. Some I translated. Some translated me—through their attention, their belief, their care. Some I studied with. Some I worked alongside. Some have their words in other pages of this issue. All continue to remain a force in my life. 

       When Beatriz Hausner, a comrade of many years, approached me in 2021 to join the editorial board of ellipse, I said yes without hesitation. A year later, when she asked if I would take the helm as the magazine’s editor-in-chief, I said yes again—but this time with trepidation. I had translated, yes. But I had never directed a magazine. That trepidation remains. The fear of not knowing the right way, the right move. But one thing has remained steadfast and that has kept the magazine alive: trusting the spirit of the collective in all its fragility, and essence. Trusting that water finds its level. And knowing, as Edith Grossman so rightly said, that translation matters.