Names scratched on a bedroom wall

In a back bedroom of a concrete block dwelling at the edge of Gabarone, Botswana, two beds crowd the room. One is occupied at this late morning hour by an old woman.

The other by a teenage girl. A visitor to the household who shows any concern at all would be invited to greet and perhaps pray for those who lie there in the shadows and in weakness. Those shadows are long and deep, for this is a season of AIDS. A household member, like some attending angel, stands silently by in the shadows.

You may note the dinginess of the walls or the joyless belongings, the rumple of blankets. The mustiness of the room begs for sunlight. You may note the helpless waiting of those who cannot afford the care of a western doctor or the miracle cures in the city pharmacies.

While you linger with these sobering thoughts, a song begins. “Morena, naya tumelo.” (“Lord, give us faith.”) What else, good Lord, do they have? A prayer is spoken, remembering the faithfulness of heaven. It recalls that though others may not know, hear or care, there is an ear pressed to the ragged edges of life, listening for the whisper from the shadows. The prayer dies away, and parting greetings are murmured.

Then, as the visitor turns to leave, a tiny shaft of light from the window reveals a telling detail on the wall. Written carefully there in pencil on the plaster is a short list of names and telephone numbers. The names are those they might call if ever a desperate need arises. They are names of those to whom it would mean something if they were ever in trouble. It is too dim to read them all, but one name I recognize: a friend of mine who is also known to this household.

There is a roll of this kind written somewhere in the beyond. It is not a long list, but it includes those who have shared heaven’s compassion for the poor who lie in back bedrooms. It is a list of those who are not so consumed with schedules that they may still be summoned at an hour of need by those who are not their own. The names are of those who are available not just in time but in heart.

That graffito on a dingy bedroom wall has left me with a yearning. It is my ambition that my name be written somewhere on such a wall.

Jonathan Larson, author of Making Friends Among the Taliban (Herald Press, 2012), lives in Atlanta.