Ismat Chughtai’s “The Quilt” is usually read through female desire, patriarchal neglect, and same-sex intimacy within the enclosed world of the zenana. These readings remain necessary, but they often leave the child narrator at the edge of the discussion. Her experience deserves closer attention than it has so far received. Building on child-centred readings of Lihāf, it argues that Chughtai does not present the child’s violation as a sudden, isolated event. The story traces a slower movement: the child is placed inside Begum Jaan’s domestic world, drawn into affection and admiration, exposed to adult sexuality, involved in bodily boundary-crossing, and then left with fear she cannot name. Using child sexual grooming as a literary-critical lens, the article reads the quilt as a figure that both conceals and exposes harm. Begum Jaan is not reduced to a simple villain; she remains a woman wounded by patriarchy, even as she becomes implicated in the child’s violation. The article argues for a trauma-aware reading of “The Quilt” that can hold its feminist, queer, and child-centred dimensions together.