The Book Beneath the Bed

Tariq was not a reader.

In fact, books bored him. He much preferred video games, action movies, or simply riding his bike through the neighborhood with his friends. So when his mom asked him to clean his grandfather's old room after he passed away, he sighed, shrugged, and said, “Fine.”

The room smelled like old wood and faded memories. Tariq dusted the shelves, folded blankets, and boxed up piles of newspapers from decades ago. But when he bent down to sweep under the bed, something stopped him. There, buried beneath dust and time, was a small, leather-bound book.

He pulled it out and read the words written in fading ink:

“The Life of a Boy Who Didn’t Know He Was Brave.”

It wasn’t printed by a publisher. The handwriting inside was uneven and personal. It was a diary. And it was his grandfather’s.

Curious, Tariq flipped through the first few pages. What he found surprised him — stories of a young boy growing up in a small village, learning to fish with his father, sneaking mangoes from the neighbor’s tree, being afraid to speak in class, dreaming of running away to the city. Each entry felt alive. Each one sounded like someone just like him.

He read page after page. The boy — his grandfather — struggled with self-doubt, fear of failure, and not feeling “good enough.” But then came the entries about courage: standing up to bullies, asking difficult questions, and helping a friend escape a flood.

For the first time, Tariq saw his grandfather not just as an old man with stories but as a real person — a boy who had once been unsure, scared, and brave all at once.

Tariq sat there on the floor, silent.

That evening, he didn’t turn on his PlayStation. He didn’t call his friends. He just kept reading.

The last page of the diary had only one line:

“If someone finds this one day — remember, your story matters too.”

Tariq closed the book, holding it like a secret treasure. Something had shifted inside him — the kind of change you can’t see right away, but that grows with time.

He started asking his grandmother questions. He began writing small thoughts in a notebook of his own. He even signed up for the school storytelling competition — just to try.

Tariq had always thought books were for “other” kids — the quiet ones, the smart ones. But now he realized: books don’t belong to one kind of person. Some books belong to you, when you least expect them to.