Ismail Kadare - The Siege

For a second he lost the thread of his argument. Çelebi found it a burdensome moment, for he feared that a halt in the conversation, a sneeze, a spilled glass, or just a longer pause than normal would be laid at his door.

“Yes … Craftsmen in the rotting and corroding of nations, if I may say. But, my friend, you should know that peoples don’t only dilate, they also contract. When they receive a great blow from the outside, from us, in this particular instance, they don’t necessarily go into decline, they can also emerge from it with added strength. On the other hand, damage from the inside, damage secreted from inside their own ranks, well, yes, that is the evil that can bring them to their knees … Do you grasp what I’m saying, Çelebi? On your raid into the hills, you had occasion to see large excavations ringed with stone steps and columns. Those are the famous theatres of long ago. And do you know why thousands of people sat for hours on those stone steps? To watch and hear four or five individuals, who were called actors, recite the reasons why men kill each other and how they had to kill each other … And how the man who performed such abominations the best even had a crown placed on his head, as a sign of general esteem … Now those are customs that can teach us an important lesson. They explain why those peoples never grew much in number but kept a more or less stable population, like those species of dogs which are always small — the hanums of the giaours in Edirne usually have them as pets. But do have something more to eat!”

It was the first time the Quartermaster General had spoken to him at such length and on such a sensitive subject. Thank God that he wasn’t asking him to respond. Çelebi even got the impression that his host had forgotten about him entirely.

“But even that is not sufficient,” he thundered, as if riposting in a debate. “We slave away down here spreading death and desolation, but the real fight is going on up there.” He raised his hand. “You cannot call a country conquered until you have conquered its Heaven. What I’m saying might seem hermetic to you, like some nebulous declaration of a poet … But it’s nothing of the kind!”

Çelebi felt the blood rushing to his face, because exactly that thought had been in his mind, but fortunately the high official went back to his peroration without taking the slightest notice of what his guest might actually be thinking. Rudeness has at least one virtue, the chronicler thought.

“So the fiercest battle happens up there, in heaven,” the Quartermaster resumed. “Because, just as folk hide their treasures in places that are hard to get at, so peoples and nations store their most precious assets in the heavens — their divinities, their faith, all that they hold to be sublime and that nothing can alter. By that I mean things of a higher order, things that transcend the limits of human life, things that are sometimes roughly called apparitions, in a word, everything that has to do with the soul. One day or another we’ll take possession of their castles; we’re sure to overcome them in the end. But that won’t be enough. In the final analysis they’re just heaps of stones that can be taken from us in the same way we will take them ourselves. But victory in war is something altogether different … I’m not sure if you’re following me?”

Not only had Çelebi stopped following the thread, he was no longer able to make anything at all from the tangled skein of the Quartermaster’s speech. But he nodded his head nonetheless, thinking of his own tent, the tent he had so often cursed but which now seemed to him like a corner of paradise.

“Have you ever wondered about how something to which you’ve never attached much importance can be fearsome — let’s say, a song? The war that took place a month ago, for instance, has become the subject of a song. All over the world people know the ancient art of extracting a handful of verses from a pile of events and struggles, including those that happen in royal palaces, just like you extract wine from a bunch of grapes. The grape and even the vine die in the end, but the wine never goes off, quite the opposite in fact: it gets better and better as time goes on. Same thing for war. The war comes to an end, but the song made in its honour moves on from generation to generation. It moves on like a cloud, like a bird, like a ghost, whatever you prefer. And it engenders a new war. How can we kill that black bird …? Or else, we could take their language. I don’t know if you’ve ever reflected — but as a man of learning, you must have — that a language is a creation as magnificent as it is mysterious. Well, it is, and to such a degree that I’ve often thought — may Allah forgive me! — that many things in this world would be a lot quieter if language simply didn’t exist. A part of the heaven that I mentioned just now is connected to it, because, more than any other faculty, language is in communication with Heaven. Have some more halva! When you told me a while back about their habit of speaking in a slightly nasal tone, it struck me how hard it is to change anything at all, even just the nasal tone you mentioned. That’s something really difficult, Çelebi, much more difficult than knocking down gates or demolishing ramparts. And to do it you can’t call in the cannon or architect Giaour’s ground plans to help you out!”

To the chronicler’s amazement his host now began to eat ravenously. It seemed his exhausting tirade had made him famished.

“In higher places there are two attitudes to this sort of thing,” he went on after wiping his mouth on a napkin. “But apparently our side is winning the argument at the moment.”

Çelebi was now even more bewildered. What were these two attitudes and these two sides? He was, moreover, unclear about where the “higher places” were.

“We had a long debate on the issue,” the Quartermaster said. “What would we leave to the Balkan peoples, and what would we take away from them: their religion, or their language? Some thought we should take both away, others reckoned we had to leave them one or the other. Naturally, all sorts of arguments were put, until, in the end, our camp seemed to have won. Which means we will leave these peoples their faith. As for their language, for the time being we will only prohibit it being written down. It’s too soon to ban the speaking of it.”

Çelebi must have raised his eyebrows because the Quartermaster General bent over and brought his perfumed head close to his ear:

“I must have worn you out a bit, but I took the liberty because you are my friend, and it’s a long while since I had a chance to get things off my chest. Now I’m going to tell you a secret which I hope you’ll keep to yourself.”

The chronicler felt so shaken up already by what he had heard that he thought that his beleaguered brain could hardly bear an extra burden.

“Well, here it is, my dear Mevla. I have to inform you that my job as Quartermaster General is for me only a secondary occupation. In reality …”

Allah! the chronicler muttered to himself. A suspicion of that sort had indeed passed through his mind, but he had banished it from his thoughts so as not to sink and drown. Throughout the camp there had long been speculation as to who was the real head of the army. All sorts of crazy ideas went around. Some said the real commander-in-chief was a ragged dervish, others thought the role belonged to deaf-mute Tahanka, who was of course only pretending to be deaf but in reality heard everything. Another group was convinced that it was neither of the above, but the Black eunuch who looked after the Pasha’s wives. But the truth turned out to be something else.

“In other words … you … to put it differently …”