A review by Fifi Abou Dib, for L’Orient littéraire, May 1st, 2025

With May vanishes (or Ghaybat May in Arabic), Najwa Barakat signs her seventh novel, set against the backdrop of a dystopian Beirut. The story of May, a lonely woman who, at 84, observes the decline of her body and the decay of her brain, is so realistic, it borders on cruelty — with the collapse of the sphincters and the tricks of memory. Najwa Barakat’s writing then goes on to rinse in poetry a pen that almost in spite of itself dips into bodily fluids and other dejections. As if seeking to reach the bottom in order to better attain the sublime, the novel oscillates between two time periods: that of the reader who witnesses May’s daily life, constantly observing herself, worried about the moment when her faculties will abandon her, and the returns to the past dictated by a foreign presence secreted by her decaying brain.

From her ninth floor apartment, awakened at dawn by a fitful sleep, May observes the city, the rooftops transformed into sheds, or rather dumps for discarded objects, and hears strange noises. A cat, or rather a female cat, has taken up residence on her terrace. Although she agrees to take it in, she refuses to become attached to it and doesn’t even give it a name. The creature will be watered and fed, but will not be allowed inside the apartment. This is what the old woman, mother of two young twin boys, has decided, whom she has also refused to love, in the all-consuming sense of maternal love. The boys have left, have made successful careers, and watch over her from afar. Throughout the banking crisis, they made sure she never lacked for anything, generously paying for the services of Youssef, the Syrian caretaker, and Chamili, the Sri Lankan housekeeper. May, however, should not have been in need. Her husband, a doctor, left her enough to live on in a decent retirement.

But Lebanese banks have scandalously withheld their customers’ deposits, granting them ridiculously low withdrawals on their life savings. We watch with glee as the proud May goes to her banker’s office with her ivory-headed cane, listens placidly as he reels off the same empty excuses, and, as she leaves, with a sudden and unexpected gesture, spills the coffee reserved for privileged clients all over the computer and the table. With panache, she demands that the damage be reimbursed “from her own account.”

The illness of the cat, which suddenly disappeared and was found dying, and the appearance of a stranger in the apartment will shift the story into another dimension. We are now in the memories of May or her young offspring sitting on the living room sofa. The foam of painful memory that surfaces speaks of “her,” hia. A young woman, motherless, adored by her father and aunts, pampered, fulfilled, passionate about theater. Spotted at school for her promising talent, she goes on stage and falls into the clutches of a narcissistic pervert. He exploits her, and she lets him, intoxicated with love. The marvelous tale of this fall, in which Najwa Barakat offers her heroine a role in Cocteau’s La Voix humaine and seeks help from Phaedra, Andromache, Frida Kahlo and her “pig”, Diego Rivera as she describes him in her breakup letter. Nothing is more common than a romantic disappointment, and at the same time, nothing is more singular. This experience takes a dramatic turn that explains the seven-year gap in May’s life.

And what will become of these so well-played “supporting roles,” Youssef, Chamili, and the nameless cat? What will the twins, these distant providers, do when May, having reached the final act of her life, prepares a stage exit worthy of her panache? Navigating the range of emotions, from the poignant to the hilarious, Najwa Barakat masters this “inaccessible ease” or “al-sahl al-mumtani’,” the holy grail of Arabic literature.

So present in her absences and flaws, May has something of the Beirut she traverses in her joys and especially her misfortunes and her willful amnesia. Through her, the city becomes a woman. Resilient, resilient, Beirut never renounces its dignity. Like May, its allows itself to be abused in the macho 1960s, which saw the heyday of Lebanese theater, until the awakening of its own violence. The rest belongs to the reader, who revels in this joy of a read.