Shikasta

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 organisations 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, realising, 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 recognise 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, i

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 organised 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 love-making, and then Farima, 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.

Sometimes I see an old woman, and I think she must be seventy at least, then I find out she is forty, and has had ten kids, four of them dead, and she is a widow.

I can't stand any of this. I can't understand it.

I am of the West and I believe in the equality of women. This is what I am. So does Olga. But when Olga is with Shireen and Fatima she is exactly like them. She laughs and is gay and intimate. These women have a marvellous time They make fun for themselves out of nothing. I envy them. Believe it or not. They are supposed to be miserable and downtrodden. And they are. The dregs of the dregs. And so are their husbands. When you compare these lives, pared down to nothing with what I can remember only too clearly of America I want to vomit. The fat vulgarity of it. When these women get hold of an old American magazine, a women's magazine, they all crowd around it and laugh and get such pleasure from it. One tattered old magazine, the sort of thing you leaf through at the dentist and think what a load of old rubbish, they handle with such respect. Each rubbishy advertisement gives them entertainment for days. They will take an advertisement, and go off and stand in front of the only mirror in the building. It is an old cracked thing and the woman who owns it takes it for granted everyone must use it. They pull some cheap dress around one of them, and match it with the advertisement, and laugh.