Ismail Kadare: The Siege

Their camp stretches out as far as the eye can see. The ground has vanished from sight and our hearts sink. We are now alone with only the clouds for company, as it were, while at our feet, like some nightmare vision, a myriad tents are forging a new landscape, a nowhere world, so to speak .

From here you can see the pink pavilion of the commander-in-chief. The day before yesterday he sent a delegation to seek our surrender. They stated their conditions quite clearly: they would not touch any of us, they would let us leave the citadel with our arms and chattels, and we could go wherever we chose. In return all they wanted were the keys to the castle so they could take down the black bird-flag (which is what they call our eagle) from the tower where it flies, for in their view it offends the firmament. In its place they want to raise the true son of the heavenly world, the crescent .

That is what they have been doing everywhere in recent times: they pretend to be pursuing a symbol when their real aim is conquest. They kept the issue of religion to the end, since they were sure it would be their winning bid. Their chief pointed to the bell-tower and said that as far as the instrument of torture was concerned (that is what they call the Holy Cross), we could, if we wished, hang on to it, and also, obviously, keep our Christian faith. You’ll renounce it yourselves in due course, he added, because no nation could possibly prefer martyrdom to the peace of Islam .

Our answer was short and firm: neither the eagle nor the cross would ever be removed from our firmament; they were the symbols and the fate we had elected, and we would remain faithful to them. And so that each of us may keep his own symbols and fate according to the dispositions of the Lord, they had no alternative but to leave .

They did not wait for the interpreter to translate our last words before rising hurriedly to their feet in fury. They called us blind, said they had parleyed enough already, and that it was now time for arms to speak. Then they hastened towards the rear gate, taking a path through the centre of the courtyard so as to show off their magnificent costumes .

Mevla Çelebi, the chronicler, halted at fifty paces from the Pasha’s tent. He stared with interest at the members of the council going into the pavilion one by one. Before the tent stood a metal pole with a brass crescent — the imperial emblem — perched atop. As he gazed at the high-ranking officers he tried to summon up the adjectives he would use to describe them in his chronicle. But all he could find were a few weak words, most of which had been worn out by his predecessors. Moreover, if he set aside those he had to use for the commander-in-chief, there were precious few left, and he would have to take care not to use them up too quickly. It was as if he had in his fist a bunch of jewels which he would have to distribute parsimoniously among these countless combatants.

Kurdisxhi, the captain of the akinxhis , had hardly got off his horse. His big ruddy head seemed to be still asleep. After him came the captain of the janissaries, the old but still ferocious Tavxha Tokmakhan, whose short legs looked as if they had been broken and badly put back together again. The commander of the azabs , Kara-Mukbil, strode in together with the army Mufti and two provincial commanders, or sanxhakbeys. Then along came Aslanhan, Deli Burxhuba, Ullu Bekbey, Olça Karaduman, Hatai, Uç Kurtogmuz and Uç Tunxhkurt, Bakerhanbey, Tahanka the deaf-mute, and the Alaybey of the army. It occurred to Çelebi that he would have to mention in his chronicle every one of these famous captains whose names echoed with the clash of steel, wild beasts, the black dust of long marches, storms, lightning and other suchlike subjects of fear.

With the exceptions of the commander-in-chief and Kara-Mukbil, whose oval faces were agreeable to the eye, and also of the Alaybey who, like most officers of his army, was a fine figure of a man, all the leaders had features that seemed to have been designed solely in order to make it harder for him to write his chronicle. Traits unworthy of appearing in a battle epic automatically came into his mind: Olça Karaduman’s sty, the Mufti’s asthma, Uç Kurtogmuz’s extra tooth, the chilblains of his namesake, Uç Tunxhkurt, and the humped backs, short necks, scarecrow arms and sciatic shoulders of many others, and especially the coarse hairs sticking out of Kurdisxhi’s nose.

He was musing on those nasal hairs, for who knows what reason, when he heard someone calling his name.

“Greetings, Mevla Çelebi!”

The chronicler turned round and bowed obsequiously down to the ground. The man who had hailed him was the army’s Quartermaster General. He was coming towards him accompanied by Engineer Saruxha, the famous caster of cannon. Pale of skin, with eyes that were bloodshot from many sleepless nights, the engineer was the only member of the council who wore a black cloak, which accorded well with the aura of mystery surrounding his work.

“What are you doing here?” the Quartermaster asked Çelebi.

“I am observing the members of our illustrious council,” the chronicler replied in a pompous tone, as if to justify his presence.

The Quartermaster General smiled at him, and walked on with Saruxha towards the door of the tent where sentries stood guard like statues.

Feeling guilty once again for the thoughts he had just had, the chronicler watched the tall, slim figure of the Quartermaster General, whom he had got to know during the long march. Quite unusually, this time he gave an impression of haughtiness.

The last to turn up for the meeting was Giaour, the architect. Çelebi tracked him and was struck by how unnatural his gait appeared. Nobody rightly knew the origins or the nationality of the man who was acquainted with every secret of the structures of fortresses. He had no known family, which was not surprising for a foreigner, but he seemed doubly alone because of the way he spoke — in a peculiar kind of Turkish that few could fully understand. As his chin was smooth, many suspected he was really a woman, or at least half-man and half-woman — a hermaphrodite, as people say.

The architect went in last. The duty guards were the only people left outside, and they started playing dice. The chronicler was burning to know what was being said inside the tent. Now, if he had been appointed secretary to the council of war as well as campaign chronicler, he would have been in a position to know everything. It was normal for the same man to occupy both positions. He accounted for his own limited station in various ways, depending on his mood. Sometimes he thought they had done him a favour by not overloading him with work and thus allowing him to concentrate entirely on the chronicle, which was intended to be an immortal record of the campaign. But at other times, such as now, as he looked at the Pasha’s pavilion from a distance, he guessed the real reason for his exclusion, and felt bitter and disappointed.

He was about to move off when he saw several council members emerge from the tent. The Quartermaster General was among them. He saw Çelebi and called out to him.

“Come on, Mevla, come for a walk, we’ll be able to chat. The council is now going over the details of the attack and those of us not directly involved have been asked to leave.”

“When will the assault begin?” Çelebi asked shyly.

“In a week, I think. As soon as the two big cannon have been cast.”

They sauntered slowly, with the Quartermaster’s orderly following them like a shadow.

“Let’s go into my tent for a drink and escape from all this racket,” the Quartermaster said, making a wide gesture with his arm.