Shikasta

I watch and think of how we throw everything away and nothing is good enough.

Sometimes they say they are going to learn languages like clever me and they sit around and I start off with French or Spanish. They sit, with the children all crowding around wanting attention, then one has to go off and another. I am sitting there, handing out my marvellous phrases, while they repeat them. But the next time there is a lesson, there are fewer of them, and then only one or two. Fatima is learning Spanish from me. She says she could get a better job than she has. She is a cleaning woman. If you can call a seventeen-year-old girl that. The language lessons haven't come to much, but they made an occasion for fun while they lasted.

Shireen is delighted she is having a baby, though she is too tired to drag herself about, and it means even less food. And she worries all the time because it is time Fatima is married.

Fatima is very slim, and not pretty, but striking. She knows how to make herself attractive. She uses kohl and he

Benjamin knows he is out of place and that they find him amazing so he keeps away.

Shireen wants Fatima to marry a friend of Naseem, who is a clerk in the same office. Naseem thinks he will marry her. They joke about it. Naseem says, Have a heart, or words to that effect, why do you want the poor thing to be married and saddle himself with all this misery. Indicating Shireen and the five children. He laughs. She laughs. Fatima laughs. If I am there and I don't laugh, they all turn on me and tease me, saying I look so solemn and boring, until I do laugh.

And then there is a sudden wave of black bitterness. It is awful, an irritability that gets into Naseem and Shireen and they hate each other. The children whimper and wail. The two rooms seem full of children's dirt and vomit and worse. Flies. Bits of food. It is horrible, squalid and awful.

Naseem then jokes that perhaps his friend Yusuf would like me instead of Fatima because at least I am educated and can keep him in luxury. At which Fatima calls me into the cubbyhole she shares with the three older children, and she takes down her best dress from a hook in the mud wall. It is a dark blue dress, of a soft cloth, very worn. It smells of Fatima and of her perfume, heavy and languishing. The dress has beautiful embroidery on it in lovely colours. Fatima made the dress and did the embroidery. This dress is a big thing in her life. She puts on me gold earrings, long, to my shoulders, and then about a hundred bangles. Gold, glass, brass, copper, plastic. Yellow, red, blue, pink, green. The gold bangle and the earrings are precious to Fatima, they are her dowry. But she puts them on me and is delighted.

This has happened several times. She loves doing it. It is because she admires me for being so educated and able to do what I like. So she thinks. She thinks I am marvellous. My life seems quite beyond her and utterly amazing.

Yesterday afternoon she put all this on me and then made up my eyes. She made my lips a dark sultry red like a tart's. She stood me in front of the cracked glass in the neighbour's room, and the women came crowding around to watch. They were all excited and delighted. Then she took me back to her sister's rooms and sat me down to wait for supper. Yusuf was coming. I said to her she was mad. But it was the wrong note, I could see that. She had to do it. Meanwhile, Shireen was all worldly-wise and smiling. Naseem came home, worn out. Thin as a rake because he does not eat what little there is for him, he always gives it to the children. He laughs when he sees me. Then in comes Yusuf. He is handsome, with dark liquid eyes. A sheikh of Araby. He laughs. He pretends I am his bride. It is fu

There I sat, all dolled up, a sacrificial calf. It was a lovely meal. I adored it. All the time I was furious. Not at them. At the awfulness of this poverty. At Allah. At everything. And it was all ridiculous because Fatima and Yusuf might just as well be married already. There is that strong physical thing, and the antagonism. They quarrel as if they are married, and are sure of each other.

After the meal, the feast-feeling faded away. The children were excited and a nuisance. Everything was a mess. Naseem and Yusuf went to a cafe. Shireen put the kids to bed. Fatima cleaned things up. Then she sat with me and said, Do you like him Rachel? Quite seriously, but laughing. I said, Yes I like him and I shall have him! Oh, you are going to marry him then? Yes, I shall marry him, I said. She laughed, but looked grave, in case there was a chance in a thousand I might mean it. And I kissed her so she should understand of course I wouldn't marry her Yusuf. At the time I was wanting to howl and weep. But I personally think on reflection that I am extremely childish and they are not.

Then Fatima took me into the court.

It was a night with a moon, last night.

People were sitting around in the shadows of the court. We sat by the pool. It is a tiny rectangular pool. The lilies in the earth pot at one end were smelling very strong. Olga was there, sitting quietly in the dusk. She had one of the babies on her lap. It was asleep. I don't know where George was or Benjamin. Olga knew I was in with Shireen and Naseem and Fatima because I had asked to take the pudding. She knew about Yusuf. She was worried in case I hadn't behaved well. She didn't want me to have hurt their feelings.

When I came out and sat by the pool with Fatima she was looking at my face to see if I had behaved well. So I gave her a look which meant Yes I have.

The moon was overhead. It should have reflected in the pool. But there was this dust on the water. Also little bits of twig. Also bits of paper. The water is never clean. A woman will take a child that has made a mess and wash it there. Or someone will bend and splash water over his face, in the heat. Olga began by trying to stop people using the water but she has given up. She says by now they must be immune to any germs. Fatima leaned forward, and began carefully with the side of her palm to scoop the dust and rubbish off the water. Then Shireen came out from her quarters and she sat by Fatima and she too creamed off the dust. She knew what Fatima was up to, but I didn't. And Olga didn't. They were obviously up to something. This went on for some time. People sat quietly around, tired after the hot day, watching the sisters using the sides of their palms to scoop off the dust and wondering what would happen next.