In 2014, Mai Al-Nakib, a Kuwaiti writer born in the seventies, collected some of her short stories, and tied them together with a set of vignettes. The stories are separated, a separateness that is reminiscent of the sense of alienation that the writer seems to feel toward her homeland. But what ties these stories together is the desire to collect objects, a desire that stems from a need to instill order in a chaotic and haphazard world. The idea of home is elusive and no longer tangible to the characters in this book. As home appears distant, the characters, in a very Freudian reversal, condense their memories of their homeland to fit into small objects that they collect. Longing for the safety enabled by the sense of belonging, the characters attempt to establish some sense of order, exhibited most clearly in the repetition of the number four in the stories, hinting at the four walls that hold the objects, or the four points that contain them and perpetuate a sense of housing. Through these collected objects, the characters reach glimpses of a home believed to have changed beyond recognition. These objects, much like the vignettes that separate/unite the stories in this book, connect the characters to their lost home. Yet home is not lost, as the collection of objects and the memory they bring proves in every story. Could home simply be misplaced? Could this feeling of loss of home stem from other feelings of loss? Loss of mother is poignantly felt in most of these stories. But how have loss of mother and loss of home manifested themselves in a collection of objects, and in a desire to contain memories and feelings? What do these objects actually connect to? Are they bridges to old memories, estranged homes estranged, lost languages? This study, in a psychoanalytic reading, locates what the text is involuntarily hiding, the home that the characters are prevented from seeing. The objects, in their hidden lights, not only remind the characters of worlds forgotten, but actually recreate these worlds and find them yet again. The Hidden Light of Objects simultaneously presents and covers perceptions of identity in regards to home, identification with objects, and a desire to heal the rift between perceived alienation and home. The objects, then, are a compass, a necessary illumination that maps the tracing back of the self.