Ismail Kadare - The Siege

First counter-canto: a murder really did take place, a strange one indeed, a little before sunset, in front of dozens of witnesses. The man on the horse wasn’t Murad Han but his body double. And the man who knifed him wasn’t a Balkan but a dervish who had been specially trained for the job and was wearing a disguise. Help me, O Muse, he begged, help me with the second canto!

Second canto: the Sultan’s tent; the council of viziers surround the sovereign. A messenger runs up announcing the monarch’s death. The Sultan laughs; but the viziers frown. Why have your eyes gone as dark as ravens? “Because it is an evil omen,” the Grand Vizier declares. “When a shadow falls, its owner must fall too.” At which point they set upon him and stab him to death.

Second counter-canto: that is how this crime has been told for many a long year. They wanted us to believe that the Sultan had perished at the hand of a Christian … The body double’s guards and the killer dervish were slain on the spot to prevent the story being leaked … Come to my aid, O Muse, for the third canto!

Third canto: at the other end of the camp, a message reaches the heir to the throne, Jakup Çelebi. “Your illustrious father requests your presence.” On his way over he can hear people shouting, “The Sultan has been killed!” But the messenger reassures the prince: “His double has been slain, my lord.” Jakup nonetheless feels a sinister foreboding.

Third counter-canto: when they set off for Kosovo they had already laid plans to kill the monarch, whatever the outcome of the battle. The aim was to put on the throne not the elder son, in proper order of succession, but the younger son, Bayezit, for it was he who had the viziers’ preference. Help me, O Muse, to write my last canto!

Canto the last: Prince Jakup Çelebi enters his father’s tent. The Sultan’s corpse lies on the kilim. “But that’s my father!” the prince cries out. “They told me only his shadow had been slain!” “In this vale of tears we are all shadows,” one of the viziers says. Whereupon they slay Jakup as they had slain his father.

Counter-canto the last: the younger brother, Prince Bayezit, buries his face in his hands. He pretends not to understand, but he had actually known all about it for some time. They had promised to do it all without shedding blood, and he had pretended to believe them. He contemplates the funereal field of Kosovo stretching out before him and foresees that victors and vanquished will both be cursed for evermore. Cries rise in the far distance: “The Sultan has been slain!” The heralds again spread the false news that it is only the Sultan’s double who died, and, like his brother before him, he walks to his father’s tent. He goes in and sees the two bodies on the floor. My father and his double … he thinks. But at this point the assembled dignitaries bow down low and call him “Padishah”. He then realises that one of the bodies belongs to his brother Jakup. “We didn’t have a choice,” the Grand Vizier murmurs. “It wasn’t part of the plan.” The new monarch covers his tear-streaked face with his hands, but nobody will ever know what the tears were really made of and why they were shed …

“Forgive me, all-powerful Allah!” the chronicler sighed. He felt washed out as if he had committed an unpardonable crime. The same feeling he had had long ago as an adolescent when his friends had taught him how to have pleasure on his own. He played with himself all night long and by dawn he was emptied out and completely exhausted. “Forgive me, O Allah,” he prayed again, and he wanted there to be someone next to him, to cuddle and comfort him, like there used to be, but now there was nobody at his side. Sheer terror at being on his own made him stand up. He groped for the way out, and even managed to find it. Day was breaking when he emerged. The dawn was an impenetrable, purple-flecked grey that hid the horizon all around, and made everything seem unreal. He felt soil falling from his clothes as he walked. Anyone who had seen him at that point would have taken him for a corpse that had just climbed out of the grave. He raised his collar so as not to be recognised and hurried on. The camp seemed to be sleeping peacefully. There was no visible trace of what had just taken place. Çelebi felt as if he really had returned from the grave. In it he had buried his only chronicle that was hostile to the State. He took a deep breath, happy to be relieved of it. On the slant sides of the tents you could just make out the dampness of morning dew, so alien to the hostility of men. Terror, screams, panic and thundering hooves had all been dissolved in millions of droplets, each one of which contained a sense of the end of night and the ineluctable dawning of day. But what he saw when he got a little further on was suddenly quite different. Laid out before him was a whole line of tents that had been knocked over, some of them slashed, with trampled banners on the ground among a dead horse and a human corpse lying face down. Çelebi shuddered. It was a sight of devastation that rent the heart. And further on there was another endless line of knocked-down tents looking as if they had been swept over by a gale. He came this way, he thought, as he hurried to leave the area and get back to his own tent. Then he heard the sound of irregular footsteps. Someone was limping towards him. It was the tall figure of a man leaning on a walking stick, of the kind blind men use. As he got nearer he made out who it was: Sadedin. He was muttering through his teeth. From time to time he waved a club, threateningly.

The day after they cut off our water, they sent a deputation to negotiate with us. Clad in their formal attire, the envoys waited outside the great gate for us to let them in. One of them held the flag of peace in his hand, another beat softly on a drum. From the battlements we shouted down to them to move away, or else our arrows would pierce them. Then the drummer shouted back at us:

“You benighted ones! Do you not hear this drum? The Padishah had it made from the skins of his enemies!” He struck it a few more times, then said: “We shall make more drums like these from your skins. Madmen! If you only knew the fate that awaits you!”

That was all the negotiation there was. It is still unbearably hot. The well we dug is almost dry. We are digging another one. We suffer from thirst. So this is the siege by thirst they so often mentioned in the negotiations that were held before the fight. You can build up stores of food, they told us, but you can’t stock water!

Fearing further attacks, they are digging trenches all day long and driving stakes into the ground all around their camp. Rumour has it that Gjergj hasn’t actually attacked. Oddly enough, their own chiefs are trying to quash such rumours. If they had an explanation for the chaos in the camp, then it would be to their benefit if such rumours turned out to be true. But if the only explanation for the mess is a general panic among the troops — that would hardly be to the army’s credit .

Black smoke rises all the time from their foundry. Apparently they are casting more cannon. Their engineers and technicians are just as fearsome as the janissaries that scale our ramparts. They want to deliver a fatal blow. They are taking advantage of the great heat and of the thirst that is devouring us. As if the moon were not enough for them, they think the sun is also on their side, and thus they reckon they are masters of the universe .

They are in a hurry. They want to have it over before the first rains. Because if it begins to rain …

We often look carefully at the sky. Not a cloud to be seen. An azure desert. Solitude .