Witness Archive
Record 7
1247. A woman in what is now southern France, name unknown, walked two days to bring medicine to a village that had driven her family out the previous winter. She left it at the edge of the village and did not wait to see if it was taken. The village was suffering from a fever. Her family had been driven out for reasons the archive does not record.
Record 8
1389. Hakim al-Rashid, physician, Baghdad. Spent fourteen years writing a medical text in a simplified form so that it could be read by people without formal training. He was criticized by his colleagues. He continued. The text was copied by hand and circulated for two hundred and thirty years after his death.
Record 9
1571. A sailor on a ship in the North Atlantic, name and nationality unknown, sat up for three nights with another sailor who was afraid to die. The second sailor did not die on that voyage. The archive does not record whether the first sailor slept during those three nights. It records only that he did not leave.
Record 10
1683. A man in Delft waited in rain for three hours outside an apothecary because he had seen, through the window, that the woman inside was learning to read. She was forty years old and spelling out the labels on the bottles. He had an umbrella. He waited until she came out and told her the names of the medicines, and what each one was for. She never knew his name.
Record 11
1782. An enslaved woman in South Carolina, name not recorded in any surviving document, taught eleven children to read over a period of seven years, at significant risk to herself. Each of the eleven taught others. The archive does not follow the chain.
Record 12
1831. A woman in Edinburgh, name unknown, gave her coat to a stranger on a bridge in December. She was not wealthy. She was observed doing this by a man who was considering jumping from the bridge. He did not jump. He later became a schoolteacher. The archive records the coat and the bridge. It does not record what he taught, or how many students he had, or whether he ever told anyone what he had seen that December.
Record 13
1889. Meena Krishnamurthy, Madras. Spent forty years of her life ensuring that her younger sisters received educations she had been denied. The archive does not record how she felt about this. It records only what she did.
Record 14
1921. A dockworker in Marseille spent four weeks' wages on paper and ink to copy, by hand, a letter of reference for a man he had met once. The man was trying to emigrate. His letter had been destroyed in a fire. The dockworker did not know him well. He had a large family and very little money. He spent a whole night getting the signature right.
Record 15
1943. A woman in Warsaw gave her last piece of bread to a child she did not know. She put it in the child's hand and walked away quickly, as if looking back would cancel what she had done. The archive records the bread and the child and the direction she walked. It does not record whether she ate again that day.
Record 16
1961. A man in rural Alabama, name unknown, drove a family he did not know forty miles to a hospital in the middle of the night. He was white. The family was Black. He did not speak to them during the drive except to ask if they needed anything. The archive records that he waited until they were inside before he left. It records nothing else about him.
Record 17
1968. A nurse in Lagos slipped her own lunch under a curtain because she had heard crying on the other side. She did it without stopping or changing her pace, as if she did not want the act to become a transaction. The archive records the lunch and the curtain. It does not record whether the person on the other side knew who had given it.
Record 18
1977. Thomas Okafor, Lagos. Visited his neighbor every week for eleven years while the neighbor was bedridden. He read to him. He brought food. He did not tell anyone he was doing this. The archive records this without elaboration: he did not tell anyone.
Record 19
1991. A woman in Sarajevo, name unknown, kept a small garden during the siege. She gave vegetables from it to families on her street. The archive records only the vegetables and the families. It does not record what it cost her to keep a garden alive in those conditions.
Record 20
1998. A man in Minnesota drove forty miles each week to read to a neighbor who had lost his sight. They read mysteries. They read sixty-two books over four years. The archive records the number. It does not record whose idea the genre was.
Record 21
2003. A child in Shanghai returned seventeen times over three months to water a plant in a small garden that did not belong to her. The plant was a variety she could not have identified. The archive records that it flowered in the spring. It does not record whether she was there when it did.
Record 22
2011. A woman in Port-au-Prince, name unknown, spent four years helping her neighbors rebuild after the earthquake, declining to rebuild her own home until the last of them were done. The archive records the sequence. It does not editorialize.
Record 23
2019. A man on a train in Tokyo stood for two hours because he had given his seat to an elderly woman who had fallen asleep before she could thank him. He was standing when she woke. He smiled and looked away before she could feel obligated to stand. The archive records the smile. It records the direction he looked.
Note 2: He did not tell anyone.