The Empty Desk: Writing a Narrative Composition

The Empty Desk

For two weeks the desk beside mine in Senior 3 stayed empty. Hirwa had never missed a day before; he was the boy who always finished the mathematics homework first and then explained it to the rest of us. Our teacher read his name every morning, and every morning nobody answered.

On Saturday I was walking to my aunt's house when I saw him. He was standing at the brick-making site by the river, with a pile of wet bricks balanced on his head. His uniform had been replaced by a torn T-shirt, and his hands, when he put the bricks down, were grey and cracked.

"Hirwa!" I called. He looked at me as if I had caught him stealing.

"My father is ill," he said quietly. "Someone has to earn money. Don't tell anyone, please. I'm not coming back."

All weekend I argued with myself. He was my friend, and he had asked me to keep his secret. But I kept seeing his cracked hands and the empty desk.

On Monday morning, before I could change my mind, I knocked on the staffroom door and told Madam Mutesi everything. She listened without interrupting. Then she said that I had done the right thing, and that a child's place was in school, not on a building site.

That afternoon she visited Hirwa's family with a local leader. I never learned all the details, but within a week the family was receiving help, and Hirwa was back at the desk beside mine.

He did not speak to me for three days. On the fourth, he pushed his mathematics book across the desk. "Question seven," he said. "You've got it wrong again." Then, very quietly: "Thank you."

I had always thought a right was something written in a book. That week I learned that sometimes it is something you have to stand up and claim for someone else.