Ghaybat May

Set in a ninth-floor apartment overlooking Beirut, the narrative centers on Mai, an eighty-year-old woman whose children have emigrated, leaving her care to the building caretaker and a family doctor. The plot shifts when a mysterious visitor mysteriously enters her double-locked apartment at dawn, triggering a cascade of long-repressed memories. Through fractured interior monologues, Mai revisits a painful past involving emotional trauma, psychological vulnerability, and a toxic relationship that once drove her to a psychiatric institution. Barakat masterfully weaves Mai's personal decline with the broader historical and social disintegration of Beirut, delivering a poignant meditation on aging, trauma, memory traps, and the quiet grief of human isolation.

It is a masterfully written, IPAF-shortlisted psychological novel that offers a profound and nuanced examination of memory, aging, trauma, and modern Middle Eastern identity.

Ideal for readers of modern Arabic fiction, fans of psychological thrillers and existential literature, and those interested in character-driven narratives exploring trauma and memory.