Shikasta

by Doris Lessing

  This is being written later. Months. George has been to India, to visit Grandfather’s family. He is even more grown up, if possible, but he is still boss of that ghastly gang and he is with Hasan more than he is ever with us.

  History of Shikasta, VOL. 3014, Period Between World Wars II and III. Armies: Various Types of: The Armies of the Young.

  ‘Coming events cast their shadows before.’ This Shikastan observation was of particular appropriateness during an epoch when the tempo of events was so speeded up. Small harbingers of major social phenomena could be noted, not one or two centuries, but a few years before, sometimes even months. Never was there a time on Shikasta when it was easier to see what was coming; never a time when it could have been so easy for them to understand the simple truth that they were not in control of what was happening to them.

  Already in the eighth decade every government on Shikasta was preoccupied, often fearfully and secretively, with the consequences of mass unemployment, and particularly among the young. By then it was evident that the new (and often unforeseen) technologies would make mass unemployment inevitable everywhere, even without the world economic crisis which was due mostly to the spending of the wealth and resources of the planet primarily on wars and the preparations for wars; inevitable even if the population was not increasing at such a rate. (The checks on this increase by deaths due to famines, epidemics, and natural disasters – these last enormously increased due to the cosmic pressures – did not impose a significant effect until later.)

  By that time knowledge of mass psychology, crowd control, the psychology of armies, was sophisticated within the limits Shikasta had imposed on itself, [see subsection 3, The Shifting Criteria and Standards in the Scientifically ‘Respectable’ and Permitted. Scientific Bigotry Analyzed and Compared with Political, and Religious Bigotry in Several Cultures.’ vol. 3010, chapter 9, ‘Results of Secret Research in Military Scientific Establishments and Their Impacts on Civilian and Revealed Science.’]

  All governments had a pretty clear idea of the dilemmas they faced; and most engaged, to one degree or another, in intensive and permanent discussions with experts on the control of populations.

  By the end of the decade no one could be in ignorance as to what must be expected from large numbers of permanently unemployed youth. Already the cities were helpless before the aimless, random, unorganized violence characteristic of small groups of the young, male and female, who ‘for no reason’ destroyed anything they could. The amenities on which the cities of Shikasta were dependent for even an approximation to comfortable living – telephones, transport, parks, public buildings, anything in fact that came into the public domain – might at any moment be destroyed, defaced, or made temporarily inoperative. The cities were no longer safe at night, for these groups of young robbed, assaulted, murdered, always on impulse – and without ill-feeling, almost as a game.

  The remedy, an increase in policing – a general increase in militarization, in fact – was already highlighting the nature of the problem. What is begun has a momentum: the consequences of greater police surveillance, sharper penalties, and the further cramming of prisons already overfull, must be even greater police surveillance and powers, sharper penalties, and a criminal population becoming steadily more brutalized. But these were the beginnings of the problem: its infancy. Rampaging crowds of – at that stage – mostly male youth, on special occasions, such as public games and spectacles; the occasional, sporadic, apparently motiveless violence of small groups – these symptoms were the faint shadow of things to come, a harbinger, even though the public life of cities was already transformed, and the older people mourned lost civil standards and amenities, for it must be remembered that while we may look back at, and can study, a century of deepening barbarism, of increasing horror, a family wanting no more than to live without challenge or drama could easily find a quiet street, and ‘peace’, provided they were fortunate enough to live in a comparatively sheltered and favoured geographical area, and provided they were able to make the mental adjustment to relegate war – and its consequences – into something that happened elsewhere and did not affect them; or something that had happened to them, but between such and such dates, and then taken itself off.

  In innumerable cities during this epoch of almost permanent war, when the wealth of Shikasta was poured into war, when every information channel poured out news of war and war preparations, it was possible, for short periods, to live, by means of making constant mental adjustments, in a state of quite comfortable illusion.

  But this was not possible for the governments, which had to face the problem of multitudes of people, nearly all young, who had no prospect of any kind of work, who had never worked, and whose education fitted them only for idleness.

  At some point their numbers had to increase to the point where much more than occasional and haphazard violence, casual vandalization, could be expected. Crowds, masses, would, as if at a signal, but seeming to themselves ‘by chance’, pour through cities, smashing everything they could find, killing – casually and without reason – those they found in the streets, and when the orgy of destruction was over, return sullen and bewildered to their homes. Hordes, or small armies, or bands, or even smallish groups, would rage through countrysides, killing animals, overturning machinery, burning crops, working havoc.

  It was clear what had to be done. And it was done. Numbers of these potential arsonists and destroyers were taken into various military organizations that had civilian designations; what was done, in fact, was what always was done in times of such disturbances on Shikasta: the thief was set to catch the thief, the despoilers were controlled by the despoilers, put into uniform and made into public servants.

  But there would be more, and more, and more … there were more and more: millions. And millions.

  Armies have their own momentum, logic, life.

  Any government putting men, or women, into uniform, and keeping them in one place under discipline knows it has to exercise this mass constantly and vigorously, to make sure its energies are safely harnessed: though few Shikastans understood that phrase in its dimensions as they could, and should. Masses of individuals in military conditions are no longer individuals, but obey very different laws, and cannot be allowed idleness, for they will begin to burn, loot, destroy, rape, from the sheer logic of the mass of their diverse powers.

  The remedies were not many, and not effective, or at least not for long. One was to create not one army, owing allegiance to one slogan, commander, idea, but as many as possible, and in many uniforms. In each geographical area were dozens of different subarmies, encouraged to think of themselves as different from each other. And encouraged to compete in as many ways as could be devised. Sports, public games, mock battles, treks, hikes, climbs, marathons – the whole of Shikasta was overrun by energetic young people in a thousand different uniforms, competing energetically and vociferously in what were being kept, by dint of much official vigilance, harmless ways.

  And still the millions increased.

  Even more the wealth of the planet was being spent on war, the nonproductive.

  These armies were fed, were kept warm, were cared for, but outside the armies the populations were fed increasingly badly, and there were fewer and fewer goods to go round. Terrorized by their ‘protectors’, dependent entirely on the good will of the uniformed masses, the civilians, the unorganized, the unmilitarized, the untastitutionalized, sank always more into insignificance and helplessness.

  The gap between the young – in uniform or hoping to be – and the old, or even the middle-aged, was almost total. The older people became increasingly invisible to the young.

  At the top of this structure was the privileged class of technicians and organizers and manipulators, in uniform or out of uniform. An international class of the highly educated in technology, the planners and organizers, were fed, were housed, and interminably travelled, interminably conferred, and formed from country to country a web of ex
perts and administrators whose knowledge of the desperateness of the Shikastan situation caused ideological and national barriers to mean less than nothing between themselves, while in the strata below them these barriers were always intensifying, strengthening. For the crammed and crowding populations were fed slogans and ideologies with the air they breathed, and nowhere was it possible to be free of them.

  These myriads of armies of the young, with their variegated uniforms, or, at least, banners and badges, were only one type of the armies of Shikasta.

  In every country were small specialized armies, trained quite differently from the young. These were armies whose function was actually to fight. The high technology had made mass armies of the old sort redundant. The specialized armies were mostly mercenaries: that is, people recruited from volunteers who had an aptitude for killing, or experience of it in previous wars, or a desire to find an excuse for barbarism.

  Although most of those in the armies of the young had been given very little education, and that of no relevance to the problems that faced them, this did not mean that they had been left without what was in fact an extremely thorough indoctrination, mostly into the virtues of conformity, through the propaganda media. The various forms of indoctrination did not always coincide with what was imposed on them in the armies. And it must be remembered that even the simplest and most basic facts taught to a young Shikastan in the latter part of the Century of Destruction were bound to be more accurate – nearer reality – than anything his father and grandfather could have approached. To take one example, the ordinary, mass-produced geographical maps in use in classrooms: the information in these, for accuracy and sophistication, was beyond the wildest dreams of geographers of even two or three decades before. And geography is the key to an understanding of the basics – much more than most Shikastans had any idea of at all. Even the most sketchily educated and ill-informed youngster had at his or her fingertips facts that had to contradict, in all kinds of ways, obvious and implicit, the propagandas which afflicted them.

  What Shikastans had early on in the Century of Destruction called ‘doublespeak’ quickly became the rule. On one hand every Shikastan used the languages and dialects of indoctrination, and used them skilfully, for the purpose of self-preservation; but on the other they at the same time used the ideas and languages of fact, useful method, practical information.

  Always, in epochs when the languages and dialects of a culture have become outstripped by development of a practical sort, these languages become repetitive, formalized – and ridiculous. Phrases, words, associations of sentences spin themselves out automatically, but have no effect: they have lost their power, their energy.

  What happened very soon was what every government had foreseen, been terrified of, had tried to prevent: the armies of the young began to throw up leaders, not those designated by authority. These young men and women were able to understand, because of the amount of information still available (though governments always tried to suppress it) the mechanisms of the organizations they were in, the methods used to control them: their subjection, in fact. And these they explained to the masses under them.

  Very quickly, the masses of youth were conducting what amounted to self-education in their own situation. That they had been set to compete with each other, make formal enemies of each other, were not allowed or at least, not encouraged, to mix and mingle, had been taught to see uniforms and badges not their own as the mark of the alien, the feared; that their very existence made governments tremble; that the arrangement, organization, every moment of their lives was a function of their redundance, their uselessness in the processes of production of real wealth – their lack of worth to society – all this was taught to them by themselves.

  But understanding it did not make their situation any better.

  They had the misfortune to be young in a world where ever-increasing multitudes competed for what little food there was, where there was no prospect of betterment save through the deaths of many, and where war could be expected with absolute certainty.

  From country to country, everywhere on Shikasta, moved the representatives of the youth armies, their own representatives, conferring, explaining, setting up organizations and understandings that completely undermined or went counter to the ukases and ordinances of the ruling stratum, the experts and administrators – and it was as if everywhere on Shikasta arose a great howl of despair.

  For what could be done to change this world that had been inherited by the young?

  They were locked more and more into a sullen and despairing loathing of their elders, whom they could see only as totally culpable – and, realizing, at last, their power, began issuing instructions to their superiors, to governments, the overlords of Shikasta. As had happened so many times on Shikasta before, the soldiers had become too strong for a corrupt and feeble state. Only this time it was happening on a world scale. The governments, and their dependent classes of military and technical experts tried to pretend that this was not the case, hoping that some miracle – even perhaps some new technical discovery – would rescue them.

  The armies covered Shikasta. Meanwhile, the epidemics spread, among people, and among what was left of the animal populations, among plant life. Meanwhile, the millions began to dwindle under the assaults of famine. Meanwhile, the waters and the air filled with poisons and miasmas, and there was no place anywhere that was safe. Meanwhile, all kinds of imbalances created by their own manic hubris, caused every sort of natural disaster.

  Among the multitudes worked our agents and servants, quietly, usually invisibly; sometimes, but seldom, publicly: Canopus, as we always had done, was working out its plans of rescue and reform.

  And there, too, moved the agents of Shammat. And of Sirius. And of the Three Planets – all pursuing their private interests, unknown to, for the most part invisible to, the inhabitants of Shikasta, who did not know how to recognize these aliens, whether friend or enemy.

  RACHEL SHERBAN’S JOURNAL

  Our family has the four little rooms on the corner of this mud house, if that is the word for a building that is made of little rooms with doors out into the streets, inner doors opening in on to the central court. I can’t imagine that one family could live here, not unless there were dozens of people in it, like those Russian families in novels. So it means the building was made to house a lot of poor families. Above our rooms is our patch of roof. There are six other families, each with its little patch of roof, separated from the other patches by low walls, which are high enough to hide you sitting or lying down but not standing. Mother and Father have one tiny room. Benjamin and George have another. There is a cubbyhole for me. Then the room we use for eating and sitting in if we aren’t on the roof. The cooking place is outside. It is a sort of stove made of mud.

  We are on good terms with all the families, but Shireen and Naseem are our particular friends. Shireen adores Olga. And Shireen’s sister Fatima loves me.

  Naseem went to school and did well. He is clever. He wanted to be a physicist. His parents did without everything so he could go on studying at college, but they did not stop him marrying, and so he had a wife and a baby before he was twenty. That is a western way of looking at things. He had to support them, so he works as a clerk. He says he is lucky to get this work. At least it is regular. I often wonder what he thinks about having to be a clerk, working seven a. m. to seven p. m., and with this wife and five children and he is twenty-four.

  I spend quite a lot of time with Shireen and Fatima. When Naseem goes to work, and all the men leave the building, except for the old ones, the women are in and out of each other’s homes, and the babies and children seem to belong to everyone. The women gossip and giggle and quarrel and make up. It is all very intimate. Sometimes I think it is awful. Like a girls’ school. Women together always giggle and become childish and make little treats for each other. East or West. When Shireen has nothing in her rooms but two or three tomatoes and onions and a handful of lentils and has
no idea what she is going to feed her family that day, she will still make a little rissole of lentils for a special friend across the court. And this woman puts some sugar on a bit of yoghurt and gives it to Shireen. It is always a feast, even with a spoon of yoghurt and seven grains of sugar. They spoil each other, caress each other, give each other little presents.

  And they have nothing. It is charming. Is that the word? No, probably it isn’t.

  Shireen is always tired. She has an ulcer on one breast that heals and breaks out again. She has a dropped womb. She looks about forty on a bad day. Naseem comes home tired and they quarrel and shout. She screams. He hits her. Then he cries. She cries and comforts him. The children cry. They are hungry. Fatima rushes in and out exclaiming and invoking Allah. She says Naseem is a devil. Then that Shireen is. Then she kisses them and they all weep some more. This is poverty. Not one of these people has ever had enough to eat. They have never had proper medical care. They don’t know what I mean when I say medical care. They think it means the big new hospital that is so badly organized it is a death trap and being treated like idiots. They don’t go there. They can afford only old wives’ tales when they are sick. A doctor that really cares about them is too expensive. Shireen is pregnant again. They are pleased. After they have quarrelled I hear them laugh. Then there is a sort of ribald angry good humour. This means they will make love. I’ve seen Shireen with bruises on her cheeks and neck from lovemaking, and then Fatima, the unmarried sister, has to blush and the married women tease Shireen. She is proud. Although she always has a backache and is tired she is good-humoured and wonderful with the children. Except sometimes. That is when she is so exhausted she sits rocking herself, crying and moaning. Then Fatima croons over her, and does more work than usual, though she always works very hard helping Shireen. Then Naseem caresses her and swears and is angry because she is so worn out. Then there is more laughing antagonism between them. This is mysterious, the ebbs and flows. I mean there is a mystery in it. I don’t understand it at all. I watch them and I want to understand. They respect each other. They have a tenderness. Because their lives are so difficult and awful and he can’t ever be a physicist, or anything but a little clerk. Often he goes mad thinking about it. And she will be an old woman at forty. And some of their children will be dead. Mother says that two are weak and won’t live. Because not one of the children has had enough of the proper things to eat, they may have brain damage, Mother says.