Iraqi short fiction writer Hassan Blasim’s "The Iraqi Christ" (Coma Press, 2013) provides a horrifying portrayal of the Iran-Iraq War, Desert Storm, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as depicting the deep impact of these conflicts on the Iraqi people. The fourteen short stories in the collection demonstrate how the wars that have plagued Iraqi society have the capacity to bring out the most gruesome and ferocious tendencies in its people. One of the recurring themes in the stories is border crossing. Illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees escape their past traumatic experiences of violence and attempt to find happiness and success in new cultural landscapes, even as they show a deep awareness that their futures may be full of nothing but devastation and, ultimately, death. This paper gives a general overview of the ways in which acts of border crossing, across national boundaries, geographical landscapes, and mental spaces, are portrayed in the collection. Crossing physical borders is a dangerous undertaking that often ends in disaster. However, some characters succeed in reaching their destinations, proving that borders can be transient, fluid, and penetrable. Others dwell indefinitely at borders, where they attempt to negotiate their subjectivities in these “in-between spaces.” On the surface, Blasim’s characters seem to be able to survive their past tragedies and adapt to new social and cultural contexts. However, this paper argues that even for those who succeed in finding asylum, mental borders created by the past remain impenetrable. Traumatic memories play a central role in impeding characters’ attempts to live peacefully in the moment or to envision a nonviolent future. Their failure to liberate themselves from the burden of past violence ultimately leads to either madness or death. To capture his characters’ fears, anxieties, and obsessions, Blasim shifts between realist, hyperrealist, surrealist, and Kafkaesque styles. This paper sheds light on how the characters’ border crossings within Blasim’s stories is reflected in the author’s movement across hyperrealist, surrealist, and Kafkaesque modes of expression.