Safe Corridor by Jan Dost

Reading, UK. Dar Arab 2025. 186 pages.

Written by Jan Dost, a Syrian Kurdish poet, writer, and translator, Safe Corridor is his first novel to appear in English, and it comes at a time when the world is reeling at the horrific images of war, genocide, and children’s lives reduced to mere images and statistics. This is a narrative that is uncomfortably too close to our skin, seeping through, despite the collective numbness that has ensued as we have continuously watched the world at war.

The novel follows the protagonist’s traumatic memories as he attempts to make sense of loss. Kamiran, only thirteen years old, is forced into adulthood as he becomes responsible for his siblings and traumatized mother. Kamiran’s secrets, silences, and multiple traumas are etched onto his skin and through narration to his one trusted friend: a piece of chalk. This elusive object becomes symbolic of his inability to survive the tragedies of war, and he holds onto the chalk for safety and a sense of control. The chalk remains the only way he can speak and write.

Writing becomes Kamiran’s way of befriending the chalk amidst the loneliness that comes for him after his father is captured by Daesh and his mother descends into madness. Kamiran’s mother is left speechless, mute, unable to exist within her body. In the same way, Kamiran is left with nothing but his own body, a body that matures, hits puberty, turns into chalk (as he narrates to his audience). The disease is also referred to as “calcinosis cutis,” which tends to occur as a result of trauma and inflammation. Whether we read the disease as symbolic or metaphorical is not the question. The novel invites us to become part of Kamiran’s body as he witnesses war through his body, his sexuality, his fears, and his tragic losses.

Slowly, we realize there is no “safe corridor” that his family will be able to reach—and we, as his companions, cannot help but stand as observers of the tragedy of humanity. We stand at the junctions of reality, fiction, and the trauma of war, displacement, and the state of the world we live in today. Safe Corridor insists that the child’s voice must be heard, no matter how muffled the voice is, and whether we turn into chalk ourselves as we listen. The point is to lean in and listen to the narrative, allowing it room in our lives—even if it’s just a corridor that we pass through as we read the novel.

Shahd Alshammari
Gulf University for Science & Technology, Kuwait