Shikasta

by Doris Lessing

  Yet it was never anything much. So you would think at the time.

  You could even say that nothing at all has ever happened. Well, what did? George has made trips, and gone camping, been taken to tea or a museum or something by someone or another. Or a tutor has said, Let us go to the park. Or a mosque or something. Or just sitting and talking under a tree on the edge of a street. Once I saw George with Ibrahim sitting on the earth under a tree. He was about nine. Or ten. In Nigeria that was. They were talking. Just talking. I looked at them and I wished I was there too. But I believe I must have said no when I was invited. I can’t remember it, but I believe so.

  What these people are, that is the point. After they have been coming for a while to the house, then I say to myself, Here it is again.

  What is it, then?

  That is the point.

  Well, that is the second thing on my mind, what these people are.

  I liked Hasan from the start, but I thought he was old. I suppose he isn’t. Mother says he is about forty-five. That is about Simon’s age.

  Hasan talks to George a great deal. Hasan spends more time with George than any of the other ‘special contacts’ have done.

  George is with Hasan nearly every day. He went away with Hasan to the Sacred City for a week too. Now I am thinking about it. That was only last month. When George came back, I noticed our parents didn’t ask him what had happened there. They both treat George as if he is grown up. He is sixteen. Are they afraid of him? That is the wrong word. There is a right word, but I don’t know what it is.

  What I mean is this. The more you think about all this, the more amazing it is. But not in a dazzling way, as you say, How amazing. I mean, your mind keeps going deeper and deeper in.

  Every day there is more to think about. (This is being written a bit at a time every day.) And I think a lot in between, and I go and ask Mother questions. When George comes in, I try to talk to him, but that doesn’t happen very often. He isn’t unkind. He doesn’t tease, the way he used to, before he was grown up.

  I wish we could go back to before George was grown up. I don’t want to grow up. I want to stay a little girl. I am writing this because I am supposed to be telling the truth. So that is the truth. Sometimes (recently) I have watched Simon and Olga at their lives, and it is so hard for them always, I can see that, not only the working so hard, I have only just understood that they have heavy lives. That is the right word. For once. And I see George at this time, and I know he is finding it hard.

  I would say that he is thinking furiously. This is what I think is the main thing going on. He sometimes has a look on him that I feel on myself when I sit here thinking and thinking. As if things are crowding in too fast and you are afraid you can’t catch them all. You know you are not catching them all.

  He sits by himself a lot. Sometimes he is in the courtyard and all the children of this house and a lot of the houses nearby are there too. He plays with them and tells them stories but he is thinking. He is so restless! He gets up and moves off as soon as he has sat down sometimes, as if a pin has been stuck into him. As soon as the sun goes, he is up on the roof. He forgets about eating. Sometimes I take him a plate of something. He often gives it to the kids. It goes without saying that they are all hungry most of the time. He sits with his back to a little bit of roof, with one leg out and his arms on his other knee, which is raised, and he is looking out over the roofs and into the sky. And he is thinking. Sometimes at night I wake up and I see him sitting up awake, looking at the sky. And our parents wake too, but just go to sleep again. And now I wonder if they knew all the time that he often didn’t sleep at night when he was four or five, let alone seven when Miriam came first. Have they known all that? I have tried to get near the subject with Mother, but she doesn’t like to talk about that, I can see. I think she did know all the time but only understood what she thought about it later, like me. But that in itself is difficult. Heavy. Because if what we think now is different from what we thought then, we can take it for granted that what we think in a year will be different again. Or even a month the way my thoughts are changing at the moment. Your thoughts are the last thing you can rely on.

  Yet for all that, something else is there to rely on. Behind the thoughts.

  Although this very strange thing whatever it is, is going on now, our family life is quite ordinary and normal: even Benjamin is normal, I suppose. There are other families with sultry children. Father says Benjamin is ‘very sultry’ when he gets exasperated with him.

  Benjamin is really awful actually. But I know that what is making him like this is that he doesn’t understand where he has gone wrong. He must know he has said ‘no’ to what George is doing now. He must think about it. Benjamin may be ‘sultry’ but he isn’t stupid. He is being driven quite crazy by George. He thinks of nothing else.

  When George came back from the week in the Sacred City he would not ask one question, but he hung about George all the time like a thunderstorm. George is always kind with Benjamin. Well most of the time. As he is with me. But I know that often he is too preoccupied with thinking to know we are there. And he probably wishes we weren’t hanging about too. I am always on the lookout for a word or a look from George. Let alone a smile. When he was still a child he had a marvellous smile. It was a warm friendly smile. But he is less likely to smile these days. He moves about all hunched up. It looks as if he had an invisible weight on his shoulders, and he is trying to stop himself from throwing it off. Sometimes he looks quite tormented.

  And then suddenly, usually when the family is together at table or on the roof, he gets very funny and lively and plays all kinds of games and is very affectionate with us. I watch Mother and Father and they are relieved. They love it when he is like this and Benjamin gets like a little boy, and shouts and laughs too much, but that is from relief. I am afraid I am just the same.

  I hope I am not such a weight on Simon and Olga as Benjamin is.

  I have just shut my eyes and looked at the expression on their faces when they look at Benjamin. It is patient and humorous. When they look at George their faces are sweet, and joyful. That is the exact word. I love looking at their faces when George is being funny and sweet. It is exactly as if they had been given a wonderful present. Well I don’t think they feel that Benjamin and I are wonderful presents. Not to judge by their faces.

  I see that this piece about Facts is all about George. I didn’t know that was going to happen when I started.

  It was Hasan who said I should write this journal.

  I hadn’t actually forgotten it was Hasan, but that fact was at the back of my mind. I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t capable of forgetting it altogether.

  It is extremely funny what we remember and what we choose not to.

  What happened was this.

  It was just after sunset. The moon was coming up. There were hardly any stars yet. It was lovely. It is wonderful after the hot day is over. The dust is so strong and sweet, because the water has been sprinkled on it. And the cries and the talk from the town around us are mysterious. And the Call to Prayer, too, I love it. I shall hate leaving here. I hope we won’t have to, not for a long time. But I suppose it won’t last. And the smells of the spices in the cooking. I get quite drunk on it all every evening at sunset time.

  George had gone up on the roof by himself. I couldn’t help myself, I went up there too. He smiled when I got up on the roof, but then went on sitting as if I weren’t there at all. I was miserable because he didn’t take any notice of me. Shortly after that Hasan came up. George didn’t seem surprised to see him. Hasan sat in another angle of the roof. He did not say anything for a time. The heat was coming out of the mud of the roof into my back and into my feet. I can’t remember how the conversation started. Now that I am looking back, and linking this with other times I was with George and Hasan I realize that I often did not take any notice of the beginnings of conversations. George and Hasan were talking, mostly Hasan, with George listening
very intently. George sometimes nodded or gave a quiet smile as he does when something pleases him. I understood that evening. I understood that I was understanding. I could have understood before, that when George is with Hasan and Hasan is talking, George is hearing things in what Hasan is saying that are quite beyond me. That I can’t hear at all. I could see from George’s face that in quite ordinary things that were said was much much more. I just couldn’t grasp it. It was going too fast for me. It was above my head. The conversation was apparently about not very much. I was thinking in an agonized sort of way, that they weren’t talking about anything important or special. Yet George’s face kept lighting up as he understood the things that were there.

  I was so miserable and frustrated that I was nearly crying.

  Hasan noticed, and kept an eye on me, and went on talking to George for a while. Then he turned straight to me, so that he faced me, and he began talking to me, not in the same way, but simpler. He asked me if I kept a diary or anything like that. I said that I had a little diary, and I wrote in it things like, Had an Arabic lesson or guitar lesson or went to college. He said he would like me to write an account of my childhood.

  Now I must confess something. The truth. When he said that, quite casually, I felt a terrific surge of resentment. He wasn’t my tutor or anything! Why did he say, as if he had every right to it, that he wanted me to do this or that! But even while I was being resentful I was thinking that if he had asked me if I wanted to spend every afternoon with him, while he talked to me, and George wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have felt angry or resentful at all. On the contrary!

  I knew that he understood exactly what I was feeling.

  Then he gave me a little nod, as if to say, It will wait, don’t worry.

  Then he went on talking to George, in that way which was above my head.

  I wanted him to talk to me again, ask me questions. I was longing for him to say again that he wanted me to write something for him. I had all sorts of ideas in my head. I would write him essays about when I went with Olga to the virus epidemic and I helped nurse there for a whole month. I wanted him to see me as someone sensible and responsible. Olga said to me that I had been invaluable in the epidemic and she could rely on me to do exactly as I said I would. I was proud enough to die when she said that, but I wanted Hasan to see me like that. And then when they took no notice of me I started thinking rude and silly things like, Oh, if you think I’m just a young miss, all insipid and ordinary, well then, I shall be. And I was sitting there, all derisive inside (just like Benjamin) thinking I would write an essay like the silly ones I have had to do in some schools, What I Did in the Holidays.

  While I was thinking this, I wasn’t listening at all to George and Hasan, and yet now I would give anything to have that chance again – just to sit there, trying to hear. I had not been offered such a chance before. Not being with George and Hasan for a couple of hours, quite alone, while they talked. And why should I be offered it again? I spoiled that one when it was given to me. I see now that this happened on purpose. I had been wanting and agitating all the time to be with George and Hasan, doing all the exciting things that I imagined they did – I don’t know what! But it turns out that all that happens is that Hasan talks in that very ordinary but special sort of way, and George takes it in. He is riveted by it. He is so absorbed that you could throw water over him and I believe he wouldn’t notice it.

  But when I was offered the same, then I did not know how to listen, my emotions got in the way, I was sitting there all raging and wanting them to look at me, talk to me, like a little child.

  I see now that this was made to happen so that I could see – I was being made to see – what stood between me and being able to learn from Hasan.

  Anyway, since I am telling the truth, here goes. I rushed down off the roof, and got an essay I had written for English Comprehension. I was proud of this essay. I got good marks. But now I wonder. I shall put in the essay here. It wasn’t long. This was because I was trying to give the impression in the essay that my noble emotions silenced me, or something of the kind.

  THE OLD MAN AND THE DYING COW

  On the television last night I saw something that affected me and changed me forever.

  The television set was in the public square and a lot of people saw it. They were all poor people, who never have had enough to eat.

  It was a programme about the famine in the Sahel. Several famines in fact, because they had taken shots from different programmes to make a general report. One of the shots stays in my mind. An old man is sitting by a cow.

  The old man is extremely thin. His ribs are showing. His collarbone and his upper arms are like a skeleton.

  But he has a patient wise air, and his eyes are thoughtful. And very dignified.

  The cow is so thin, she is just skin stretched tight over her ribs, and the pelvis bones are sticking right out. You can already see how she will be when she dies in a few days.

  But her eyes look into the camera, and they are patient and wise.

  There is nothing but dust everywhere for miles around. Nearby is a patch of withered sticks which is the millet that was planted for the food for that year. But the drought has killed it all.

  The cow has walked until she staggered and subsided to the earth.

  She will never get up again. She will die here. The sun is burning down.

  The old man has built a little roof to shade her. It is some reeds stretched across four sticks. This gives a little thin shade. This cow is his friend.

  The old man is sitting by the cow. She is in the stripy shade from the reeds, but he is in the full sun. The dust is blowing over them.

  There is not enough water for everyone.

  The old man has a little water in a tin cup. The cow sometimes pants and her tongue starts lolling out and then he puts some drops of water on the tongue and he swallows a few drops himself.

  There they sit. He will sit with the cow until it dies.

  The cow knows it is going to die.

  The cow thinks that she has belonged to this man and his family all her life. But the wife and the children have died. The cow is wondering why she had to lie here not able to get up, by the old man, and why the dust is everywhere, and there is no rain and no food and no water.

  The cow doesn’t understand.

  The old man doesn’t understand. But he says it is The Will of Allah.

  I don’t think it is The Will of Allah. I think it is wicked, wicked, and Allah will punish us all for letting the old man die there and his poor cow die in the hot dust. Why? Oh God! Why? Oh Allah!

  Well, I got back up to the roof with this in my hand, ready to give it to Hasan. He was talking to George and not about to take notice of me. I sat down again.

  By then all the sky was full of bright stars, and it was the time when everyone in the little houses was eating. I knew that soon our supper would be ready for us.

  Then Olga did call up, Supper.

  Hasan finished what he was saying, and got up. He was wearing the usual white robe, and he seemed very tall and a bit shadowy. My heart was aching. It was aching badly. I did not know what to do. I was frantic.

  George got to his feet and stood by Hasan. I saw to my surprise that George is very nearly as tall as Hasan.

  Both were looking at me while they stood there, tall and shadowy, with the stars all around them.

  Hasan smiled. I held out my essay but he did not take it. Of course he didn’t. He hadn’t asked for it!

  So then I said to him, tumbling it all out, I want to do it, I’ll do the diary, I want to, really.

  Good, was all he said.

  And believe it or not, I again was full of resentment, because he hadn’t taken my precious essay. And as if he should have congratulated me or made a fuss of me or something for saying I would do this journal.

  First I went down the outside of the house on the stairway. Then George behind me. Then Hasan. I was longing for Hasan to come in to supper. He
had come several times.

  But at the foot of the steps he said goodnight, and George said goodnight and that was that.

  Benjamin was not at supper, thank goodness.

  That is how I came to write all this.

  And now I know why he wanted me to write it.

  This bit is being written several weeks later. Nine to be exact.

  Two facts. One is, several times I have found myself – I put it like this because it is always by accident apparently, with Hasan and George when they are talking. Or rather Hasan is talking and George listening. At least now I don’t emote and grovel inside. I can listen. Sometimes I have just caught the drift of what is being said. But the truth is that I know that after being in on a conversation like this, George has understood one thing and I have understood another. That is the nature of this kind of talk.

  The second fact is that George has done something I’d never never have expected not in a thousand years. He has become the leader of a whole gang of boys at the college. They are just as silly and noisy and awful as any of these gangs anywhere. They are always rushing about and making speeches, full of self-importance.

  And George is with them.

  I think it is awful.

  I know that Mother doesn’t like it, nor does Father.

  As for Benjamin, of course he is having the time of his life, being full of scorn.

  But George sees Hasan all the time as well. I don’t know what to think.