1941, Cairo: Mayy Ziyāda, a giant in the Arab renaissance, dies at fifty-five in isolation - a stark contrast to an early life lived amongst the greatest politicians, activists, and scholars of her day. The circumstances of Ziyāda's death and subsequent near-disappearance from the literary canon embodies a brutal indictment on the reality of life as a female scholar. Ziyāda wrote profusely in her lifetime; however, she is eerily silent about the period towards the end of her life, when she is accused of insanity and forcefully institutionalized at The Lebanon Hospital for the Insane. No narrative of her suffering exists; no justice cry pounds on the grave. May-Nights of Isis Copia by Waciny Laredj, takes on this narrative gap by fabricating a record of Ziyāda’s journals from the institution. Laredj writes in her tongue to tell the story of her institutionalization, with an interwoven connection to a wider narrative of female suffering. This paper examines the ways in which fiction revises the historical record in the case of Ziyāda, utilizing theories of critical fabulation; works that rely on archival research and fiction to tell purposefully untold stories, and feminist theories on hysteria and gendered violence. Seeking out a vision of Arabic intellectual history that could be possible if those brutally suppressed from its creation were given materiality through lore and archive.