When the World Went Quiet

von Feroza Rasool Mia

178 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

She waited three years for this baby. So why can't she feel anything?

March 2020. Maryam Suleiman gives birth to her son in an Abu Dhabi hospital, alone, in a city that has gone completely silent. Her husband is turned away at the door by a guard. Her mother's flight from Johannesburg is cancelled. Her mother-in-law arrives for a two-week visit and cannot leave for eleven months.

And when they place her son on her chest, Maryam feels nothing at all.

She waited three years for this child. She prayed for him in the last third of the night. She loves him - she would die for him. But somewhere between the empty delivery room and the locked-down flat, Maryam has begun to disappear, and there is nowhere to put it, because every single person who reaches her says the same thing.

Alhamdulillah. You are so blessed.

They are right, and that is the worst part. A healthy son. A kind husband. A faith she has never once doubted. If there is no reason for what is happening to her, then it cannot be an illness - so it must be a failure. And so Maryam does what she has always done: she smiles, she copes, she tells everyone she is fine, and she becomes very, very good at it.

It will take a locked-down year, one stubborn friend who refuses to stop calling, and one verse of the Qur'an before Maryam discovers that what she is carrying has a name, that she is not the first woman ever to carry it - and that despair in motherhood was never the sin.

When the World Went Quiet is a tender, funny, unflinching novel about postnatal depression, faith, marriage and the long way back. It is for the woman who got exactly what she prayed for and cannot understand why she is drowning - and for everyone who loves her and cannot see it.

Contains themes of postnatal depression and suicidal thoughts. Support resources are included at the back of the book.

• Reihe: Independently published
• ISBN: 9798176087284
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 21.09.2026
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: Independently published