Ismail Kadare - The Siege

Someone cried out:

“The Pasha has been killed!”

One of his aides-de-camp, the one with the bloodied neck, leaned over him.

“Help me up,” the Pasha said. “I’ve not been hit.”

“It’s his horse that died,” the other officer shouted out.

Tursun Pasha stood up. With his feet on the ground he felt like he was in a hole.

“The Pasha has been killed!” the same voice screamed again.

He got on to another horse that someone had instantly brought to him, and spurred it to a gallop. His guards followed.

“Pasha, sire, keep away from the wall,” one of the aides-decamp shouted to him. “The giaours have spotted you!”

Arrows rained down even more thickly. But the Pasha did not move away from the wall. Once again he cantered alongside the wall at whose foot what people call a “war” was taking place. On this occasion it took the form of a human mass rising from below towards another mass of men overhead. Unseen like a demon behind a screen of smoke given off by pitch, the latter was doing all it could to prevent the former from climbing up. It was hitting it without mercy, setting it on fire, burning it to a cinder, chopping off hundreds of its arms and legs. But the rising mass did not falter or turn back. It went on rising, rung after rung, slipping on its own blood, clinging by its nails to the stone, and when its limbs were cut off, it instantly grew hundreds of new feet and new hands that sought only to go on going up and up …

The nightmare went on until dusk. Then the fall-back drums rolled. Units beyond counting once again flooded back into the deserted camp and the Pasha waited in his tent for estimates of the day’s losses. Though it had not brought victory, the battle could still not be considered lost. Never before had such a large mass of men reached the top of the wall. Usually only a small number of men who got over the parapet came back alive, but those who stayed up there did not give their lives cheaply. And today’s assault must have cost the defenders a multitude of dead. Thirst had begun to do its work. A few more assaults of that degree of violence, and the decimated, thirst-tortured defenders would not be able to repulse the attack all the way along their wall. The Pasha needed a few more days of drought. Just a few days. That’s what he told himself, but at bottom he knew that a few days without rain would not be enough. Exhausted by such long-drawn-out tension, he sometimes indulged in absurd daydreams. He imagined how easy it would all be if after September came not October and November, but July and August. He fantasised about a crazy wind that would suddenly come and muddle up the seasons like autumn leaves. At other moments he thought that so much time had elapsed since the start of the expedition that a pile of things had sunk into oblivion, that passions had dulled, and that forecasts of victory and the timescale set had all been wiped from memory. He felt that way especially at night, when he went outside and cast his eyes on the huge camp with its tents, its stars and its brass, bronze and golden crescent moons giving a lugubrious imitation of the night sky. He mused that a whole chunk of the heavens had been forcibly brought down to earth and set to work amid the bloody business of men. As he gazed at length at the desert of the night he began to doubt whether somewhere in the far distance, beyond the roads and the clouds, there really still were towns containing offices cluttered with papers explaining the ins and outs of every case, the merits and the weaknesses of officials, including his own. At such times, when he stood facing the night alone, facts became detached from their consequences, the linkage between causes and effects went slack and anything seemed plausible. But dawn came with its cruel rawness, and everything — things, facts and the order of the days — recovered its logic. And he knew that logic was against him.

His aides-de-camp brought him the first reports: three hundred and ten officers of all ranks killed. The number of non-ranking soldiers lost in battle was not yet known. He enquired about council members: all were safe. The thought that they paid too much attention to their own wellbeing made him feel downcast once again.

But over the next days he would set them a challenge in self-preservation. He only needed a few dry days, nothing more. He now feared one thing alone: the sound of the rain drums. Their rumbling had not been heard for several months. If they were to strike up again now, it would be the end of everything.

Sirri Selim sent him a short report. He had examined the innards of four Albanians who had fallen off the battlements and he could certify that they were suffering from lack of water far more acutely than the man captured during the previous attack. But no sign of disease. They were clearly not drinking the contaminated water any longer, so their thirst must have doubled, or even tripled. If only that could go on a little longer, dear God! he prayed. Still no figure for losses among the soldiers. Tursun Pasha ordered an increase in the number of sentries and put some battalions on alert. Night was falling, and a raid by Skanderbeg was to be expected. It was his usual time.

The Pasha sat down to relax and he noticed that his elbow was stained with dirt. He hadn’t previously paid any attention to the soil of this place. He gazed at it as if in a trance. The aide-de-camp who came into the tent found him staring hard at the elbow of his sleeve.

“Excuse me, sire,” he said, fearing he would be blamed for falling short in his duties, “I’ve only just noticed it myself. You must have dirtied your tunic when you fell …”

But the Pasha’s mind was elsewhere. He was pondering the fact that soil is the same in any land on earth, the only difference being in what grows in it. His eyes were drooping, and the attending officer lowered his voice to a whisper. The commander-in-chief was nodding off to sleep. The officer quietly placed a light blanket over his master and tiptoed out of the tent.

After the troubled nights he had had, the Pasha at last sank into deep sleep. An orderly brought him his supper, then aides-de-camp came to give him the figures for the day’s losses, but they all found him fast asleep. They did not wake him. One of them tucked the blanket over his master’s shoulders, then they all carefully closed up the entrance to the tent and silently went their way.

He spent several hours in calm and dreamless sleep. Later on, he did have a dream. He saw the rain drums all lined up on parade. Then they suddenly began to beat by themselves. He ordered them to stop, but they did not obey his command. They carried on beating a muffled beat. Then he ordered them to be punished. His guards launched into them, tore them to shreds with their lances and daggers, but still the drums kept on beating. The Pasha woke up. It was pitch-dark inside the tent. He moved an arm that had gone stiff and realised he had fallen asleep in his battle dress. He felt he was not yet properly awake because his ears were still buzzing with the thump of the drums he had seen in his dream. He threw off the blanket and sat up straight. What was that? The thudding noise had not stopped. So it wasn’t the afterglow of his dream. Far away, deep inside the camp, someone really was beating a drum. He heard a gentle swishing on the sloped sides of his tent, and then it all became clear in a flash. Rain.

He stood up and stayed still for a moment at the foot of his divan. Then, stepping on the animal skins laid on the floor, he went to the entrance, pulled back the oilskin curtain, and went outside. The first glimmer of dawn threw a white haze over the horizon. The sentries who had been huddling by the side of the tent to keep out of the rain stood to attention as soon as they saw him and presented arms. But he didn’t even glance at them.