Syrian writer Jan Dost’s Safe Corridor is a searingly surreal portrait of the physical and psychic wounds that war inflicts on the most vulnerable among us. Narrated with lyrical intensity by thirteen-year-old Kamiran, the novel blends the brutal reality with Kafkaesque metaphor, depicting Syria’s painful conflict and the ways by which its abhorrent violence is processed and internalized. Furthering this work’s poignant impact is its lucid, flowing translation by renowned author and translator Marilyn Booth; in this interview, she speaks to us about remaining faithful to voice, handling stylistic variations, and her much-admired history with Arabic literature.
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Ibrahim Fawzy (IF): What first drew you to Safe Corridor and to Jan Dost’s work in particular?
Marilyn Booth (MB): I first met Jan at the Emirates LitFest in Dubai, just before the COVID pandemic. We had a wonderful conversation about literature and life, and I left with a couple of his books. When I read Safe Corridor (ممرّ آمن), I was absolutely blown away. Since then, I’ve read several more of his novels, though not all of them yet.
Jan is not only prolific but remarkably versatile—a poet, a novelist, a memoirist, and he also writes compelling historical fiction. Distinctive narrative voices are what most draw me, as both reader and translator, and that is precisely what I found in Jan’s work. He is a meticulous stylist, with hardly a wasted word. For a translator, that makes the work more demanding, but also deeply rewarding.
IF: You gravitate towards historical fiction, is that right?
MB: Yes! But there’s always a question of how one defines historical fiction. One could, in a sense, say every novel is historical fiction. I’m basically an intellectual historian who studies nineteenth-century Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, so I’m very interested in how people represent certain historical moments and figures as well. For example, an author can pen a historical novel by fictionalizing the experience of a historical figure.
When a writer sets out to create a work that’s set in a specific historical moment—with attention to what was going on at that moment—it draws me. Still, it isn’t the only genre I gravitate towards.
IF: Safe Corridor is told through the eyes of thirteen-year-old Kamiran. What techniques did you use to capture a child’s voice—which can swing so quickly between innocence and vulgarity?
MB: This is a wonderful question! I think that was probably the most challenging thing about translating this novel—getting the child’s voice right. I became very fond of Kamiran while translating this book. He is multidimensional, complex. He’s precocious and, by his own admission, very talkative and a bit obnoxious. He loves language, he’s desperate to write, and he listens to the adults around him closely. For instance, he listens to physicians on TV and picks up terminology—like “verbal dysentery” and “nocturnal incontinence”—so he’s smart, but also a bit of a show-off. However, in essence, he’s a kid who is completely wounded inside. He’s devastated by his father’s disappearance, his mother’s grief, and the tragic death of his little sister. He has a sense of responsibility towards them, and that’s weighing on him.
During the process of translating this book, I had to think about how to get that precociousness across. So, in some places, it was appropriate to use more elevated language, but while keeping in mind that Kamiran is a kid, and he likes doing kid things. He uses a lot of profanity because he listens to the adults around him—though one thing that I was always a little uncertain about is how rude I should make his language. He uses disrespectful language, but from a position of semi-innocence. But also, the erosion of childhood in war means that he doesn’t feel he has to defer to adults, at least not without challenging them. His loving but sharp parries with his uncle are an example of this.
I do think it’s essential, as a translator, to bring empathy to a text, to make that empathy work in the translation, when it is appropriate. There’s been a lot of interesting work done on empathy in literature from the perspective of authors and readers. I think translators, too, need not only to analyze and think about characters, but to feel them as well. (Sometimes, of course, a character is not one to feel empathy with . . .)
IF: One of the most haunting images is Kamiran’s transformation into chalk. Unlike Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, he feels not horror but relief—even joy. How did you render this paradoxical tone of trauma-as-pleasure in English?
MB: As I said earlier, I’m always guided by the narrative voice, and I tend to choose works that are powerful and engaging in that way. I tend to stick close to the original because I feel like that’s the best way to go, and that, for me, it’s usually the most ethical pathway to a good translation. To be honest, I didn’t find it difficult to render this paradoxical tone, as you call it. That tone is embedded in Kamiran’s voice—I just had to think very carefully about how to render it, but I wouldn’t say that I had a particular kind of strategy. I followed Kamiran and Jan’s lead. A translator does many drafts, going back and forth between the translation and the original. In my final draft(s), I am living inside the text. That’s where I am listening most intensely, and trying to pick up on the resonances, to really get the tone where it should be. Again, I was keeping in mind that this poor boy is so wounded, and he desperately wants to express himself.
IF: At one point, Kamiran becomes “the historian,” recording what adults try to forget. How did you convey this tension between innocence and unbearable knowledge?
MB: The novel is exceptionally layered. Kamiran sometimes recounts stories he has heard from others, so the narration becomes an embedded voice, and I had to consider not only the narrator but also how he channels these stories. I sometimes wondered if I was being too straightforward in handling this, but I was following the lead of the text itself. At other times, Jan uses conversations between Kamiran and his younger brother, Alan, to reveal Kamiran’s personality—as both a child and, paradoxically, as an older interlocutor. That tension really comes through. For instance, when Alan asks, “What’s a safe corridor?” Kamiran replies:
Safe corridor means everything except actually being safe. Just this one tractor trailer has seen two awful things happen: Uncle Naaso being killed by a sniper and the death of that boy who didn’t stop moaning until he died, because his wound was hurting so much. So now, just imagine the thousands of tractors and buses and taxis out there. Thousands of stories and probably more terrible than the stories we’ve seen in the trailer of Uncle Naaso’s tractor.
IF: Speaking of the title—it is deeply ironic. How does the novel dismantle the idea of safety in warzones, and how did you bring that irony into English?
MB: The title sets up that irony. You open the book expecting one thing, and you’re immediately immersed in a world that’s the complete opposite. That tension is already woven into the text itself. I should say I’m grateful to Jan for this title because it translates literally and works beautifully in English—and that’s not always the case. I’ve been criticized before for some title translations, as sometimes we had to invent something different, and other times it wasn’t even my choice but the editor’s insistence. Here, though, it’s perfect—strong in Arabic and equally powerful in English. I’d also like to mention DarArab. They were wonderful to work with, absolutely respectful of both the text and the way I rendered it. And I had an excellent working relationship with Jan. Whenever tricky issues came up, I emailed him, and he was always generous in his responses. To me, that makes him an ideal author. He’s supportive and ready to answer questions, but at the same time, he respects my role and gives me the freedom to do the work.
IF: The novel gives us raw portraits of war’s impact on children—from Kamiran’s secret bedwetting to his sister Maysoon’s tragic death. How does Dost use these intimate details to show the psychic damage of war, and how did you translate that into English?
MB: Well, I think Jan does that brilliantly through the characters, and especially through having a child as the narrator. As you probably know, this novel is a companion work to his novel باص أخضر يغادر حلب (A Green Bus Leaving Aleppo), which essentially tells the same story of the same family. But he decided to re-narrate it, from a child’s point of view, and that choice, combined with the vibrancy of the child’s personality, brings everything into sharp focus, letting the pain come through with extraordinary clarity.
Of course, I worked hard to honor the voice, but it wasn’t a matter of asking myself whether the pain would be clear to the reader. Instead, I thought a lot about empathy, as I mentioned earlier, making sure the reader could feel for Kamiran, understand what he’s going through, and enter the story he’s telling. At times, readers may find him irritating, but that tension between irritation and deep sympathy is part of what makes him such a compelling narrator. And then there’s the way he plays with language, often using his wit to mask his pain. Kamiran personifies the chalk as a friend, and of course it’s also a writing instrument. That’s not accidental. It opens up questions about expression, about writing itself, and about his frustration at not finding a surface to write on. In that sense, the chalk becomes both his companion and a symbol of his desperate need for language. That the chalk doesn’t speak back is both comforting and a mark of Kamo’s extreme solitude in the midst of the suffering.
IF: Characters in the novel voice both resistance and deep cynicism—Mazyat’s “body-war,” Uncle Ali’s disillusionment, Kamiran’s father’s dismissal of revolutions. How do you see these different philosophies of survival shaping the book?
MB: They are powerful characters, especially Uncle Ali and Mazyat. Part of what makes them so strong isn’t only their personalities, but also the fact that they matter so deeply to Kamiran. We meet them entirely through his voice, which intensifies their presence. At times there’s a touch of cynicism or a child’s distancing from the world of adults, but Kamiran recognizes that they, too, are wounded. What’s remarkable is that Kamiran is not just absorbing their perspectives; he is, in a sense, speaking back to them.
IF: Safe Corridor is full of unforgettable symbols—the crying olive trees, the mysterious “red olives,” Kamiran’s stolen green bicycle. Which of these struck you most in translation, and how did you handle their layered meanings?
MB: This is a novel that takes daily experience and shows how it can become frightening and surreal. The olive tree is such a mighty symbol, utterly central in places like Syria, Palestine, and across the region. In handling such symbols, I didn’t attempt to instruct readers on how to interpret them. I trust and respect my readers, and my aim was to create a text that remains open to multiple interpretations. I think it’s healthy for readers to work a little, to struggle with a text in the same way they might approach an English-language novel that also resists closure, so I avoided foreclosing interpretation. The best way to achieve that was to stay as close as possible to the original, allowing those interpretive possibilities to flow out naturally.
A translator can write an introduction, a foreword, or even footnotes, and that kind of apparatus can be helpful. I didn’t feel it was necessary for this novel. And I don’t want to dictate how the novel should be read. I want readers to immerse themselves, to think and puzzle over the text, without being alienated by over-explanation. In the past, there was more pressure to provide context or background, but I think that’s changing, in part because readers today can easily seek out historical or cultural context on their own, and perhaps because multilingual and multiregional experience has become normalized in English fiction.
For instance, when I translated Latifa al-Zayyat’s The Open Door, I felt a strong introduction was necessary to help readers grasp both the political and literary context of a time that was already distant and a social and literary context that readers would not be likely to know. Without that framing, much could have been misunderstood or overlooked. That wasn’t the case with this novel. Rooted in a specific and recent moment—the Syrian Civil War, told from a Kurdish vantage point, and surrealistic and absurdist in its mode of narration—the novel poses profound questions about war simply through the way the story is told.
IF: How does Safe Corridor fit into your broader trajectory as a translator of Arabic literature?
MB: Well, one thing I would say—as I mentioned earlier—is that I’ve always gravitated toward works with intense, unusual narrative voices. And that’s not just about quirky or unusual characters, but about a truly distinctive approach to storytelling. That’s been the case since one of my very first translations, a short-story collection by Egyptian women titled My Grandmother’s Cactus. I’m still very proud of that book; I wish I could see it republished. The writers in that collection had strikingly different voices and styles, and I worked hard to make those distinctions come through in English.
I’ve also always approached translation—and my academic work—from a feminist perspective. I care deeply about novels that complicate questions of gender. I’ve also translated works that don’t focus on that as directly, but I do tend to be drawn to feminist voices. Early on, I translated mostly women writers, in part because I was frustrated that so few women’s voices were available in English—but I’ve also translated remarkable writers who happen to be men. In that respect, I’d highlight my translations of the extraordinary Lebanese novelist Hassan Daoud. His works complicate questions of identity in profound ways, including gender, and he also writes sensitively about disability and voices coming from positions of oppression. I admire his work tremendously; I’ve translated two of his novels and would happily do more if the opportunity arises. So, in that sense, Jan’s work fits squarely with what I’m drawn to as a reader, as a translator, and very much as a feminist.
IF: Finally, was there a single line or passage in Safe Corridor that was the hardest—or perhaps the most rewarding—for you to translate?
MB: I don’t think of any particular line that was especially problematic. My main anxiety throughout the translation process was ensuring I captured the right tone and voice. However, the final paragraph is so heart-wrenching; it makes me cry every time I read it.
Marilyn Booth is professor emerita, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Magdalen College, Oxford University. At Oxford, she held the endowed Khalid bin Abdallah Al Saud Professorship for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World (2015-2023); at Edinburgh, she held the Iraq Chair in Arabic and Islamic Studies (2009-2015). Her research publications focus on Arabophone women’s writing and the ideology of gender debates in the nineteenth century, most recently The Career and Communities of Zaynab Fawwaz: Feminist Thinking in Fin-de-siècle Egypt (Oxford University Press, 2021). Safe Corridor is the twenty-first volume of Arabic fiction that Booth has rendered into English. Other recent translations include Omani author Zahran Alqasmi’s Honey Hunger; Omani author Jokha Alharthi’s Silken Gazelles; and Lebanese author Hoda Barakat’s Voices of the Lost. Her translation of Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies won the 2019 Man Booker International Prize. In addition to other novels by Alharthi and Barakat, her translations include novels by Hassan Daoud, Elias Khoury, Alia Mamdouh, Hamdi Abu Golayyel, Latifa al-Zayyat, Somaya Ramadan, and others, as well as a memoir by Nawal al-Saadawi and three short-story collections. Her first venture into translating nineteenth-century fiction, Alis al-Bustani’s 1891 novel Sa’iba is forthcoming with Oxford World’s Classics.
Ibrahim Fawzy is an Egyptian writer and literary translator working between Arabic and English. He holds an MFA in Literary Translation from Boston University and both a BA and MA in Comparative Literature from Fayoum University, Egypt. Fawzy’s translations have been featured in various literary outlets. His accolades include a 2024-25 Global Africa Translation Fellowship, a 2024 PEN Presents Award, and the 2024 Peter K. Jansen Memorial Travel Fellowship from ALTA.
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