Shikasta

Now when I look back at all the places and people, and I've asked him, he has always said, We talk, that's all. Or, He tells me things.

Benjamin has refused the special contacts from the very first. From when he was seven in New York and he didn't like Miriam. That is the truth. He has always had the opportunity, just as George had, and Benjamin has always refused it. You can think about it and think about it. I am thinking about it, and there is something so awful there I don't know what to do with myself, because of course I am thinking, What have I refused? I have always been offered everything too, but I always had some good reason not to. Like loving Mrs. Jones and wanting to be in the kitchen cooking with her and feeding the chickens.

Benjamin. It has always been the same. What he has wanted, right from the begi

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 you can 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. I hang 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.