Shikasta

by Doris Lessing

  I said to him, Like Naseem and Shireen, for instance. Advantaged? Yes. They were brought up to be decent. They were good people. But most people now are not brought up to be decent, but the opposite and it is not their fault.

  It took me some time to hear what he had said. I said to George, Are they dead then? George said, Naseem died a month ago, of an infection. He got chilled. I said, You mean, he died of not having enough to eat. That’s right, he said. And Shireen died in the hospital in childbirth.

  So what has happened to the children?

  He said that two of them have died of dysentery, and the baby Shireen died of is being looked after by Fatima. The other three have been taken into a Children’s Camp.

  By then I was crying, though I had decided not to cry.

  George said, Rachel, if you can’t face all this, then you’ll have to come back and do it all over again. Think about it.

  I have been trying to think about it.

  I wish I was dead with Naseem and Shireen.

  I have to write down that George is not beautiful the way he was only two years ago. He is actually ugly sometimes with being tired.

  I have seen that Simon will not live long. He is like Olga, a long way from us. George sits with them, every minute he can. I go in too, then I leave because I want to cry, and they are certainly not crying, but very serene.

  George has said that he wants me to help Benjamin with his work in the Children’s Camps. I couldn’t believe it. He said, Yes, Rachel, that is what you have to do. I said, Oh no, no, no. He said, Oh yes, yes.

  Benjamin came in, great sunburned oaf, and I couldn’t. George wasn’t there. I knew quite well George had made sure I was alone with Benjamin. Benjamin kept saying, Where is George, where is Mother, where is Father. Simon had gone off to work at the hospital, and Olga was lying down. I saw that Benjamin was feeling left out. At last I made myself ask him if I could come and help him at the Children’s Camps. His face, well! I was glad I had asked. I see that when Benjamin comes in here he needs very much to be liked. Now I am going to actually have to face doing it, I don’t think I can. George isn’t here, he has gone on a trip to a Youth Army in Egypt.

  I went with Benjamin to his Camps. He uses a light army truck. He stopped at the Peace Café to offer lifts. We took seventeen people, all for the Camps. Benjamin’s Camps are fifteen miles out. Benjamin says this is far enough out to prevent them coming in to tear the place to pieces in the evenings. He said that about the little kids, and it was exactly the same as old people and ordinary people saying about the Youth ‘tearing everything to pieces’. The place of the Camps isn’t very pretty. It is flat and dusty with some low hills around. Suddenly we came to a barbed-wire fence. It is electrified. Benjamin said there has to be a fence. To stop people getting in as much as to stop the kids getting out. Quote unquote. There are five thousand boys in the one Benjamin lives in. There are breeze-block sheds, fifty boys to a shed, five sheds to a group, twenty of these groups. There is a standpipe for each group of five sheds, and a block of showers and lavatories. There are central offices and buildings. The Camp is built like a wheel, with the sheds as spokes, two groups of sheds on each spoke.

  There are half a dozen palm trees. A few hibiscus and plumbago bushes. The place swarms with children, but always in squads and files. Not at random. They are called by loudspeaker at 5:30 each morning. The sheds are hot and stuffy so they are pleased to get out. They do physical exercises, with a proper physical instructor. There is a palm-thatch roof over a cement floor that has mats spread on it, where they sit for meals in sessions of five hundred each. Each sitting has twenty minutes to eat. They have porridge and yoghurt for breakfast. This eating place is almost continuously in use. After breakfast they do lessons and games. The lessons are done in classes of a hundred, most of the time. There isn’t a proper place for lessons, so they go on everywhere, and in the eating shed too when it is not being used to eat in. The teaching is shouted at the children, sometimes through loudspeakers, and the children chant after the teachers. When anything up to fifty different classes are going on at the same time all over the camp it is weird, the capitals of the world being chanted here, then heroes of history chanted a hundred yards away, principles of hygiene on the other side, duty and respect to the elders next door, then addition or the multiplication table with the aid of a blackboard the size of a house, all this going on at once, and then from right across the Camp the sounds of a class chanting the Koran, or doing some dance. Well, the one thing these kids won’t suffer from is compartmentalization of their minds. They have an early lunch. Vegetables and beans. They lie down. Then they are crowded into the eating shed practically sitting on top of each other and they have history and current affairs. Indoctrination. Then they have lessons on the Koran and Mahomed and Islam. The Christians and Jews being fewer are done in the sleeping sheds. Then it starts to get a bit cooler thank heavens, and there are more games and supper. Then Prayers, and a sort of sermon, which is very emotional and uplifting. Then off they march to bed. They are never alone. Never, never. Not for one second, ever at any time. They do nothing by themselves. They are like people in big cities, always careful of their limbs and where they put themselves in case they bump or tread on each other. They are very polite and disciplined. They have bright staring watchful eyes. Then suddenly, you’ll see a group of them that have broken out of a line or a squad, go wild, crazy, tearing about, flailing their arms and screaming and pummelling each other. The young men who look after them rush in and break it up. These young men are volunteers from the Youth Camp five miles off.

  I said to Benjamin that the psychology of these children must be completely different in every way from those in ordinary families, and when they grow up they will be completely different. Benjamin said, Yes, very true, would I prefer them to be dead?

  I wonder what Naseem’s and Shireen’s three children are like now in the Camp. These children are all orphans from one of the crises.

  Benjamin slops about the Camp, smiling and full of good will, and available to everyone. The kids like him. The supervisors like him. He likes them. I can see that I underrated Benjamin. If people did not always contrast him with George, he would be admired. He is very efficient. He keeps everything working properly. Nothing would work if someone didn’t coordinate things, not with so many children and not enough facilities. Benjamin is trying to get several more sheds like the eating shed, for teaching in. He doesn’t seem hopeful. He says his main concern day and night is that there shouldn’t be an epidemic.

  Benjamin gave one of the uplift talks. The sermon, in fact. He did not tell me he was going to do it, because I know he was embarrassed. The moment I saw him there standing up ready to start, what I was thinking was, Don’t you dare try to be like George! But he was absolutely different, rather like the pep-talks at assembly in school. All for one and one for all, we are brothers, we must help each other, and God will help us. God and Allah, I would say 70 percent Allah, 30 percent God, being fair to everyone. But he did it well. What else can he do? What else could be done?

  He drove me back after the children had gone to bed. We brought in some of the helpers from the Camp. We kept picking up Youth on the road. The truck was so overweighted it had to crawl. Benjamin said two things during this drive back. One. That I should have a boyfriend. I knew that meant I am unhealthy about George. I said to him, Don’t bother, I know you mean George. But you are quite wrong about what I feel. So he said, I understand perfectly well. I am not an idiot. But if you are waiting for someone to turn up as good as George you are going to be a virgin all your life. At this we were silent a good bit. I was angry, needless to say, but I was feeling that I was unjust, because I could see he meant it well and he had spoken not at all in his usual style. He said, After all, we are both of us going to have special problems because of George, aren’t we? I digested all this. Then I said, I am not going to add to the population of the Children’s Camps. At which he said, I’ve known only o
ne girl who has so resolutely chosen to live in another century. May I present you with an elementary manual on birth control? At which I said, I don’t know why you think I am some sort of an idiot. I have thought about it. I am not interested in the sort of partnership couples set up now, no children, no home, they might just as well not be married. Why do they bother? Well, said Benjamin, being humorous, there is this thing called sex. Well, I said, I’ll apply to you for a healthy and congenial partner when I can’t stand it any more and I think I can’t find one for myself. At this we began laughing. I cannot remember ever having this kind of nice easy time with Benjamin before. Not ever. For the first time I really like Benjamin.

  But then he said he wanted me to ‘undertake’ the Camp for the girls which is the partner to his Camp. I said of course I couldn’t, how could I, I couldn’t possibly run a thing like that. He said, Why not? I didn’t know how until I did it. And anyway I don’t ‘run’ the Camp. The helpers do it.

  At this we got into an argument, but not a painful one. The helpers come from the Youth Camp, all about our age, eighteen and nineteen years old. It is always the younger people in every Youth Camp who do the looking after the children. There are no women in the boys’ Camp, and this is what we argued about. He said, It was a Moslem country. I said, I didn’t care if it was Moslem or Mars, it was cruel to have all those boys without a woman in sight. He said, What did I suggest, a mother-figure for each shed of fifty boys? I said, No, but half the helpers should be girls. He said, Good God, he has the mullahs breathing down his neck as it is, but if there were girls working with the boys day and night, the Authorities would go crazy. I said, They were a filthy-minded lot. He said, I was being a westerner and showing no insight. I said I didn’t care about all that, it was very simple, it was common sense to have some women.

  I went out with Benjamin to the girls’ Camp. There is no contact between the two, in spite of there being only five miles between them, and quite a lot of brothers and sisters being separated. But every week the brothers and sisters are taken separately to a neutral place in the Youth Camp, and spend some hours together. I suppose it is something. I had not said one word of criticism about this, because I had made up my mind not to, but Benjamin said, Well what do you suggest? – just as if I had criticized.

  The Camp is identical with the boys’ Camp. The girls and the boys wear the same clothes, a sort of suit of light white or blue cotton, trousers and short-sleeved tunics. The boys wear keffiyehs. The girls wear tight little caps over light muslin veils. Today a wind was blowing dust and sand everywhere and all you could see were dark eyes over the veils that were wound around mouths and nostrils. I wished I had a veil myself.

  The helpers are mostly Tunisians and of course some Chinese. They all enjoy looking after the children. There are long waiting lists in the Youth Camps to work in the Children’s Camps.

  The day was the same as the day in the boys’ Camp.

  In the afternoon I was in the thatched shelter where they had lunch, and some bands of little girls crept out from where they were supposed to be resting in their sheds and stood around watching me. I was a new face. I wasn’t in uniform. I wore a short red dress over some pale blue trousers. The dress had short sleeves. I was quite proper. But I was very strange to them. Exotic. Not because of my looks. In fact I look like them. I said hello and was friendly, but they were serious and silent. They kept staring and crowding in and in. I had such a sense of them crowding in on me, not smiling, thousands and thousands and thousands of them. What will they be when they grow up? But they seem grown-up already with hard little faces and hard careful eyes. I sat down on the mat and hoped they would come and sit by me. They pressed in around me, looking down at me. I said to them, Please sit down, come and talk to me. First one slowly sat, and then they all did, all at once. And they sat very close and stared and said nothing. Then Benjamin came striding along, and they all ran away at once, without even a glance back.

  Benjamin said, Come into the administration hut. That was because we were creating a disturbing sensation being together in the all-girls Camp. So I did. It was just an administration hut, like one anywhere.

  He said, Well will you do it? I said, But what am I to do?

  Be here, he said, quite fierce and urgent, and I saw how he saw what he was doing. You must be here, and always be available for everyone at any time and see that things are coordinated.

  I said I would think about it.

  After supper he gave another sermon, practically word for word the same as last night’s. Everyone adored it. Love and good will all around. I suppose I could learn to give a sermon, there’s obviously nothing in it since everyone does it all the time, political speech or sermon, what’s the difference.

  It was nearly night when we left. The girls were all in lots of fifty, with two girls my age one in front and one behind for each batch, marching around and around the Camp for exercise, keeping in step, singing away. The moon was coming up.

  I said I’d think about it and I am.

  Today I had decided I would not take on the girls’ Camp. No sooner had I decided than George came back. He brought two children, a boy and a girl. One for one Camp and one for the other, I suppose? Kassim and Leila. Parents died of cholera. They are here in this flat. Very quiet. Behaving well. They go off into George’s room when he is out and shut the door. I suppose they cry.

  I was in the living room by myself. George came in and sat down. All the doors open. Anyone can come in any time and that is the point. But we were alone for a change. I said, All right, I’ve seen the Camps.

  He waited.

  I did not say anything, so he said, Have you told Benjamin? I said Yes, and he said at once, very concerned, but putting up with it, Then he must be upset.

  Yes, he was, I said. He sat there waiting, and so I said, I have been thinking about how we were brought up. He said, Good! – And I’ve had a thought you will approve of … He was already smiling, very affectionate. I said, How many people in the world have been brought up as we have been?

  He nodded.

  All the time, more and more Camps, enormous schools, everyone herded about, slogans, loudspeakers, institutions. He nodded.

  I went on talking like this. Then I said, But all the time, a few brands plucked from the burning. Well I don’t think I am up to it.

  He sat back, he sighed, he recrossed his legs – he made a lot of quick light movements, as he does when he is impatient, and wishes that he had the right to be.

  Then he said, Rachel, if you start crying, I am going to get up and go out. He had never spoken like that before.

  But I wasn’t going to give in. I felt as if I were definitely in the right.

  Then he said, These two children, I want you to look after them.

  Oh, I said, you mean, not Benjamin, not the Camps?

  No. They come from a family like ours. Kassim is ten, and Leila is nine. It would be better if they did not go into the Camps. If it can be managed.

  I was sitting there thinking of what it would involve. Of our parents, and how they had brought us up. How can I do anything like that? But I said, All right I’ll try.

  Good, he said, and got up to go.

  I said, If I had agreed to work in the Camp, then I couldn’t have looked after Kassim and Leila. Who would you have asked?

  He hesitated, and said: Suzannah. This really, but literally took my breath away. I just sat there.

  Suzannah is kind, he said. This was not a criticism of me, but a statement about Suzannah. He nodded, smiled and went away.

  Today George came into my room, and he said he is going off on a trip again. Everywhere, through all the armies in Europe and then down to India, and to China. It is going to take him a year or more.

  I could not take this in. It seemed to me he had only just got back, and we hadn’t even talked properly yet.

  George said, Rachel, this will be my last trip.

  At first I thought he was telling me he would b
e killed, then I saw that wasn’t it. What he was saying was, it would not be possible after that to make his sort of journey.

  He told me that a lot of people will be coming here, and he would leave me with instructions of what to say.

  Not Simon and Olga? I asked and he said, No.

  Of course I knew what he meant.

  Then, just as I was thinking that now Benjamin is sensible and nice he can help with everything, George said, Benjamin will be coming with me. This was more than I could stand, all at once. George sat, quite relaxed and easy, watching me, concerned, but wailing for me to be strong. I didn’t feel able.

  George said: Rachel, you’ve got to.

  I didn’t have any breath in me to say anything. George said, I won’t be leaving for a month, and went out.

  Then I went off to lie down.