Shikasta

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 compartmentalisation 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 co-ordinate 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 one 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 ca

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 criticised.

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.