Memory Gaps: Why Do I Do Things I Don’t Remember?

This is general educational material by the author, not a medical diagnosis or a religious ruling for an individual case. Independent external medical and religious specialist review has not yet been completed.

When the trace remains but the memory is missing

You find a message sent from your account, or someone tells you that you spoke with them, and you cannot retrieve the event. The question goes beyond forgetting a name or appointment: how can there be evidence of an action I do not remember doing?

This is the knot that confronts Maryam in the chapter “The University Laughs” in Ahmed Alhafiz’s novel «أم عباس لجلب الحبيب وردّ المطلّقة». Mocking messages and an image of a talisman appear from her account, then she finds photographs and a short clip on her phone. She does not remember taking or sending them. On pages 71–79, fear shifts from something outside her to doubt about her relationship to her own actions.

The cause of a memory gap cannot be diagnosed from a single story. The NHS memory-loss guidance notes that repeated forgetfulness that affects daily life deserves assessment; memory problems may be associated with stress, anxiety, depression or sleep problems, among other causes. The useful question begins by describing the experience and then investigating possible causes.

What do we mean by a memory gap?

“Memory gap” describes an experience; it is not the name of one disease. Are details of a conversation missing, or hours of the day? Does it recur? And is the belief that an action occurred based on a witness—or only on a file found on a phone?

These questions separate what we know from what we infer. A message appearing in someone’s account establishes that it appeared there; by itself, it does not establish who sent it or the sender’s state of awareness. That is a distinction in evaluating evidence, not a medical diagnosis and not an accusation that someone hacked the account.

In the novel, additional photographs and Maryam’s fear make the scene more convincing as fiction. But narrative persuasiveness does not turn an imagined event into a clinical file. A reader can empathize with Maryam without deciding what causes what is happening to her.

Sleep, dissociation and medical causes: different possibilities

Actions during sleep

According to the NHS sleepwalking guidance, some people may get up or perform activities while not fully awake and may not remember them in the morning. Episodes can be associated with factors such as sleep deprivation, stress and some medications; recurrence or risk of injury warrants medical advice.

This supports the possibility that behavior can occur with limited later recall in some sleep disorders. It does not prove that every nighttime message was sent during sleep, or that the fictional scene represents a specific disorder. That precision matters when reading the Dark Margin on pages 79–80, where altered awareness and sleep disorders are presented as possibilities.

What does the brain study add—and what does it not settle?

In 2025, Mainieri and colleagues compared 15 adults with disorders of arousal from sleep with 15 healthy controls. They performed resting-state functional imaging and spectroscopy with instructions to remain awake, and patients underwent two nights of video-polysomnography. The patients had been diagnosed before imaging.^[7]

They found differences in sensorimotor-network and posterior-cingulate connectivity, as well as glutamine measured in the latter region. Associations between imaging findings and clinical or psychological measures did not survive correction for multiple comparisons.^[7]

The study adds a question about coordination between movement and awareness. The sample was small and came from one center; resting-state imaging does not capture an unknown action or a missing memory at the moment it occurs, and it does not become a test for diagnosing the reader or disproving a supernatural explanation.^[7]

We do not diagnose Maryam—or the reader—because the question sounds similar.

Dissociative amnesia

The NHS page on dissociative disorders explains that some conditions can involve feeling detached from oneself or one’s surroundings, or being unable to recall personal information and events. Dissociative amnesia differs from ordinary forgetting, and assessment requires excluding other medical causes. Dissociation can be associated with severely stressful experiences, but one memory gap does not prove trauma or dissociative identity disorder.

It is therefore incorrect to leap from “I don’t remember” to “I have multiple personalities.” Nor is describing one’s actions as strange or alien a complete diagnosis. A resemblance between everyday language and clinical description can open a question for assessment; it does not make different explanations equally supported by evidence.

Does “dissociative fugue” name every action we do not remember?

The MSD Manual Professional explains that dissociative fugue is an uncommon manifestation of dissociative amnesia associated with travel or wandering away from one’s usual environment and loss of access to personal information. The term is not a synonym for everyday absent-mindedness or for every message one does not remember sending. Diagnosing dissociative amnesia also requires assessing its impact and excluding other causes, including seizures, medications and head injury.^[8]

This distinction helps when reading the Dark Margin on pages 79–80: the margin opens possibilities for understanding Maryam’s disturbance, but the terms need definitions before they are applied. The photographs, stain and emotions in the chapter do not by themselves diagnose dissociative fugue.

Likewise, the word “dissociation” used to describe different states of sleep and wakefulness should not be merged with a psychiatric diagnosis of a dissociative disorder. Research on sleepwalking concerns a possible mechanism in disorders of arousal; psychiatric diagnosis concerns a clinical pattern with its own criteria. Sharing a word does not make the mechanism and diagnosis the same thing.^[7][8]

Some neurological seizures can affect memory for the event

MedlinePlus on focal seizures explains that some seizures can impair awareness and that the person may not remember what occurred. A fixed stare or repetitive movements may be observed. If such features occur, they are worth describing to a clinician, but they do not make every memory gap an epileptic seizure and they do not diagnose Maryam from a fictional scene.^[9]

The page also notes that brain activity can appear normal after or between seizures; therefore, one normal EEG should not automatically be treated as the final answer to every question. A clinician interprets results together with the event description and context. The absence of a finding on one test does not, by itself, provide evidence of possession.^[9]

Other causes require assessment

The MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia lists multiple causes of memory loss, including head injury, some neurological diseases, medications and substances, and deficiencies of certain vitamins. The timing of onset, recurrence and associated symptoms help guide assessment. A clinician may choose tests according to the case; not every test is necessary for every person.

Listing multiple possibilities does not mean a person has the most serious one. Likewise, seeing bipolar disorder on a general list does not make embarrassing behavior or forgetfulness evidence of it. Diagnosis requires a broader picture than one incident and should not be reduced to a ready-made explanation from family or the internet.

What does «أم عباس» add to understanding the experience?

The horror in chapter four is social too. Maryam’s name spreads among students, and the trace on the phone becomes material for ridicule before she understands what happened. Others possess a quick explanation while she possesses fear and questions. The narrative shows how scandal can move faster than care.

On page 73, Maryam’s face does not appear in the short clip, and the narrative gives no conclusive evidence about who filmed it. On page 77, an ink stain near her thumb brings the question back to the body. The clues work together to intensify doubt; each clue does not become an independent answer. This is an analysis of how the scene is built, not a forensic examination of the phone.

Most importantly, Maryam’s fear shifts from “What happened?” to “Can I trust myself?” When family or university life reduces the experience to a ready-made label, the character becomes more isolated inside the story. That gives Rana’s response weight: she does not have a final explanation, but she recognizes the suffering before the cause has been settled.

Rana does not solve the mystery. Her value is that she stops joking once she recognizes the fear and pushes her friend to seek help. Dr. Qais al-Dalil, meanwhile, asks on pages 115–116 for sleep, events and witnesses to be recorded while separating observation from interpretation. This fictional choice changes the center of attention: from proving an accusation to understanding what is happening to Maryam.

For readers who want to organize the description of a similar experience, notes for a medical appointment can include:

This is an editorial way to organize information, inspired by the novel and by medical assessment questions; it is not a validated diagnostic test. Information should be collected with the person’s consent where possible, without publishing clips or turning their life into humiliating surveillance.

Do not let the question plant the answer

The MSD Manual warns about suggestion when attempting to recover memories and about accepting recovered memories as accurate without external corroboration.^[8] This is why asking a witness “What did you see?” is more useful than “Did you see something controlling her?” Do not force a person to fill the gap with an explanation that satisfies the family.

This is how the novel’s Dr. Qais al-Dalil can be read: when he separates recording from interpretation, he protects the question from other people’s desire to settle it. “I don’t know” may be the honest answer for now, alongside continued assessment, rather than manufacturing a memory or accusation.

Does memory loss prove possession?

Memory loss alone does not establish a satanic cause. Islamic belief in the existence of jinn has its textual sources, including Surah al-Jinn, verse 1; attributing a specific event to possession is a separate claim requiring case-specific evidence, which a memory gap alone does not provide.

The Dark Margin in the novel places popular descriptions beside medical possibilities and leaves Maryam facing a question about control over her own actions. This overlap can be discussed while respecting religious belief and recognizing that medical causes are not excluded by impression alone. An unknown cause does not become known merely because a supernatural explanation is selected.

What about the verse “None but Satan made me forget to mention it”?

In the story of Moses and his servant, the servant says: “None but Satan made me forget to mention it.” The context of Qur’an 18:60–64 and Ibn Kathir’s commentary concerns the fish and forgetting to report what happened at the rock.^[10] A discussion of the Islamic perspective should not ignore that the text attributes that forgetting to Satan.

But inference has limits: the verse does not provide criteria for diagnosing dissociative amnesia, and it does not say that every person who forgets an action is possessed. This is a distinction between what the text says and applying it to a case; it is not a denial of what the text affirms. In Maryam’s case we would first need to establish the action and the actor, then the absence of recall and its cause, before attributing the event to a particular explanation.

Verification and responsibility: two questions fear cannot settle

The Qur’an also says, “Do not follow what you have no sure knowledge of,” and al-Sa‘di explains this as verification and avoiding claims without knowledge.^[11] Applied here, an incomplete clue should not become an accusation of lying or certainty about possession. Asking for evidence is part of disciplined religious reasoning while acknowledging what remains unknown.

In the hadith of the Pen being lifted, the phrase “from the sleeper until he wakes” appears. The report is transmitted in Sunan Abi Dawud 4398; the displayed page shows al-Albani’s grading as sahih, and al-Durar al-Saniyyah reports Ibn Kathir’s judgment on one narration as having an isnad meeting Muslim’s conditions.^[12] A judgment on an isnad does not mean the hadith itself appears in Sahih Muslim.

The hadith establishes the relevance of sleep to responsibility, but it does not establish that an unknown act occurred during sleep. Nor does merely saying “I don’t remember” create a blanket judgment that responsibility is absent. The medical question about why recall is missing and the religious question about the ruling on a particular act both require details about that event; they cannot be answered by a label the university attaches to Maryam.

At the end of the chapter, Maryam imagines two frightening possibilities: that she did what she cannot remember, or that something is using her. This is a powerful structure for psychological horror; outside the novel, however, it does not force assessment into those two options. Attribution of the action may itself be uncertain, and memory loss can have different explanations. Protecting the question from a premature answer serves the novel’s value without turning it into testimony for a supernatural cause.

A person may choose prayer or safe religious support alongside medical care. Fear does not justify stopping treatment, coercing the person, or ignoring symptoms that require help.

When does help become urgent?

The NHS page on sudden confusion emphasizes that sudden-onset confusion needs immediate medical help, especially when speech is affected or the person does not know where they are. Some causes can be serious and treatable. Contact local emergency services; the NHS numbers in the source apply to the United Kingdom.

While waiting for help, stay with the person, reassure them with short sentences, and gather medication information if possible. Do not turn the moment into an interrogation or a session to prove possession. If the memory problem is gradual or recurrent without an emergency, arrange medical assessment. Do not stop a prescribed medication on your own.

Questions readers ask

Can someone do something and later not remember it? Yes. This can happen in different circumstances, including some sleep or memory disorders; the description alone does not identify the cause.

Does missing memory mean the person is lying? Lack of recall does not prove lying, while the person’s account alone may not settle every detail. The information should be assessed calmly.

Can possession or dissociative fugue be diagnosed from symptoms alone? These descriptions do not establish the cause. Medical diagnosis has criteria and assessment, and general religious evidence does not establish the cause of one individual event.

Is Maryam a documented medical case? Maryam is a fictional character. Her scenes help us think about fear, stigma and uncertainty; they do not provide a diagnosis for a real person.

«أم عباس» is read here as a novel about a person who finds herself accused before she finds an explanation. Knowing the limits of evidence gives the reader space for empathy and help-seeking and prevents the experience from being reduced to one verdict.

For more: see the official Umm Abbas page, Possession or Mental or Neurological Disorder?, and the sleep paralysis guide. For the broader religious question, see Does Islam affirm the existence of jinn?. The separate question of hearing voices is covered in Hearing Voices in Your Head.

Sources and reading locations

If the question involves getting up or moving at night, the sleepwalking and memory article explains what is known about partial recall and when sleep assessment may be useful.

أم عباس لجلب الحبيب وردّ المطلّقة

A forthcoming psychological-horror novel by Ahmed Alhafiz. Explore its world and current status, then read the related files according to the question that interests you.

Explore the novelRead about jinn and the limits of inference