Books My Grandmother Hid From Me

Books My Grandmother Hid From Me

By Hasnain Shah

When I was nine, I discovered the secret place where my grandmother kept the books she didn’t want me to read. It was not in the attic, not under a loose floorboard, but in a locked wooden trunk at the end of her bed. The trunk was heavy, carved with vines and flowers, and I always thought it held quilts or maybe old letters. But one afternoon, when she had gone to visit a neighbor and left her bedroom window open to the breeze, I found the key still in the lock.

Inside, the trunk smelled of cedar and dust, of pages that had known more fingers than mine. The books lay stacked in uneven piles, their spines cracked, their jackets torn in places. I had never seen titles like these in the children’s section of our small-town library: Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Color Purple, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Fahrenheit 451.

I didn’t know then why she hid them. All I knew was that they glowed with a kind of forbidden energy, as if the ink itself whispered, read me if you dare.

That first day, I slipped Fahrenheit 451 under my shirt and tiptoed back to my room. The irony is not lost on me now—reading a book about burning books, stolen from a woman who loved them enough to hide them. At nine years old, the dystopian world frightened me. I didn’t understand every sentence, but I understood enough: that books could be dangerous, powerful things.

My grandmother found out eventually, of course. She always knew more than she let on. One night at dinner, she noticed my plate untouched, my eyes glassy with thoughts I couldn’t name. She asked what was wrong, and I muttered something about firemen who set fires instead of putting them out. She didn’t scold me. She only sighed, a slow, deep sigh, and said, “Some books are heavier than you’re ready to carry.”

But she didn’t take Fahrenheit 451 away. She let me finish it, even though I had nightmares for weeks. After that, though, she kept a closer watch on the trunk. The key was never left in the lock again.

Still, curiosity is a stubborn companion. Every chance I got, I went back to that trunk. Sometimes I only lifted the lid for a moment, enough to see the covers and trace the embossed letters with my fingertips. Other times, when I was lucky, I smuggled a novel out beneath my sweater and read it in the attic by flashlight.

I read The Color Purple too young, but I remember how the voices of Celie and Shug made me feel as though I had been invited into a secret conversation about survival and love. I read Their Eyes Were Watching God and felt the Florida heat on my skin, even though I had never been farther south than our county line. These books taught me that women could speak in ways that were raw and real, that their lives could be messy and magnificent at once.

It wasn’t only the stories that shaped me, but the act of secrecy itself. Reading in whispers, hiding books beneath my bed, taught me that knowledge was something worth protecting. It wasn’t a hobby—it was a rebellion, a key to doors my world hadn’t shown me yet.

Years later, when I was a teenager and bold enough to ask, I confronted my grandmother about the trunk. Why had she hidden those books? Why not give them to me openly? She closed her eyes for a long time before answering.

“Because your parents wouldn’t have understood,” she said. “Because some people in this town think a girl should read fairy tales and cookbooks, not stories about desire or injustice. I didn’t want them to take the books away. And maybe,” she added with a small smile, “I wanted you to find them for yourself. We value most what we discover in secret.”

Now, whenever I stand before a bookshelf, I feel a little like that nine-year-old girl again, prying open a heavy trunk, heart racing with possibility. My grandmother’s books taught me that literature is not always gentle. It can unsettle you, disturb your sleep, force you to see yourself and the world with sharper eyes.

She passed away five years ago, and when we cleared her house, the trunk was still there. Empty now, its cedar scent faded, but the memory of those hidden books remains. They shaped me into the writer I am today—someone who believes that stories are not just entertainment, but survival guides, lanterns in the dark.

The books my grandmother hid from me were never truly out of reach. They were waiting, patient and quiet, for the moment I was ready to lift the lid and let them change me.