| The Siege | |
| Title Orig: | Kështjella |
| Translator: | David Bellos |
| Author: | Ismail Kadare |
| Country: | Albania |
| Language: | Albanian |
| Genre: | Historical novel |
| Publisher: | Sh.B. Naim Frashëri |
| Publisher2: | Canongate Books |
| Pub Date: | 1970 |
| English Pub Date: | 2008 |
| Pages: |  304 328 |
| Isbn: | 0-8021-4475-6 |
The Siege is a historical novel by Albanian author Ismail Kadare, first published in 1970 in Tirana as Kështjella (The Castle). It concerns the siege of an unnamed Albanian fortress by troops of the Ottoman Empire during the time of Skanderbeg, loosely based on the historical Siege of Krujë (1450). It was translated into French by Jusuf Vrioni and then from French into English by David Bellos.[1] The novel was partly rewritten by Kadare after he moved from Albania to France in 1990; most of the changes were references to the Christian beliefs of the Albanian garrison, which had been cut from the original version by the communist censors.[2]
Kadare originally intended for the novel to be called Duallet e Shiut ("The Drums of Rain"), but the Albanian publisher changed this to Kështjella ("The Castle"), which was felt to be more heroic and also served to emphasise the role of the Albanian garrison. The original title was revived when the novel was translated for the first time, in 1971, being calqued into French as Les Tambours de la Pluie. However, in Albania it continued to be known as "The Castle", and when it was translated into English for the first time, in 2007, Kadare asked the translator David Bellos to come up with a new title, referring to besiegers and besieged collectively. He alighted upon The Siege, the name by which it has been known ever since.[3]
One summer in the early 1450s, an Ottoman army invades Albania and lays siege to a castle loyal to the charismatic Albanian rebel Skanderbeg. The besieging army vastly outnumbers the beleaguered garrison, and is led by the experienced commander Tursun Pasha, but it is also racked by petty jealousies and rivalries. One of the most profound splits within the Council of War is between the military officers and Islamic mufti, who all favour traditional Turkic methods of war, and its scientific and technical experts, who include the unnamed Quartermaster-General, the gunsmith Saruxha, the physician Sirri Selim and a renegade Christian military architect. Not part of the Council of War, but privy to most of its discussions, is the official campaign chronicler Mevla Çelebi. The majority of the story is told from his point of view, though some chapters instead focus on other members of the Turkish army. Each chapter is followed by a short 'inter-chapter', written in the style of a European mediaeval chronicle, narrating the action from the perspective of the castle garrison.
On the first evening of the siege, the Council of War convenes. Saruxha recommends a lengthy artillery bombardment before any assault is attempted, but the mufti persuades the pasha to order an attack the following day, citing a favourable prediction by one of the army's astrologers. The following afternoon, the Turks mount an assault by escalade upon the castle, but are repulsed with heavy losses.
Concerned at the effect of the failed assault upon his men's morale, Tursun Pasha blames the defeat upon supposed spies within the Turkish army. He also permits the akinji cavalry to raid the surrounding district in order to collect slave-women for the troops. However, the raiders are only able to procure a few dozen unfortunate women to share amongst the thousands of soldiers, who kill them all in a single night in a frenzied gang-rape.
Tursun Pasha adopts the Architect's proposal of digging a tunnel under the walls in order to infiltrate the castle via its dungeons. The Astrologer, scapegoated for the failure of the initial assault, is punished by being assigned to the tunnelling party. The Albanians detect the tunnel and use an explosive charge to collapse its midsection. Trapped in the furthermost section of tunnel, the Astrologer and the other tunnellers slowly asphyxiate over a period of three days.
With the tunnelling plan thwarted, the Turks decide to find and cut the underground aqueduct supplying the garrison with water. The Architect attempts to use scientific methods to locate the aqueduct, but to no avail. The elderly Janissary Corps commander Old Tavxha suggests the traditional trick of using a thirsty horse to sniff out the real aqueduct, and this proves successful. With the aqueduct blocked, the garrison starts to run short of water. The following night, the Turkish camp comes under apparent attack from a relief army led by Skanderbeg, but it is subsequently unclear if an attack did actually take place, or if it was just a spontaneous rumour that led to a general panic.
Tursun Pasha orders another direct assault, this time using bombards to destroy the main gate. However, friendly fire results in the death of numerous Janissaries, and the enraged survivors refuse to continue the assault, which consequently fails. To placate the Janissaries, Tursun Pasha allows them to lynch Saruxha's assistant.
Desperate to bring the siege to an end by whatever means he can, Tursun Pasha decides to try Sirri Selim's controversial idea of releasing diseased animals into the castle. The besiegers successfully release rats onto the battlements during another assault by escalade, but several of the Turkish soldiers handling the animals are themselves infected and subsequently succumb to the disease. Worse still, the Albanian garrison manage to catch all the rats in makeshift traps before they can bite anyone, and so this scheme too ends in failure.
Tursun Pasha makes one final attempt to bring the siege to an end, ordering another assault by escalade. This time he leads the attack in person, but despite his best efforts, the Turks are once again repulsed. That night the autumn rains arrive, replenishing the garrison's water reserves and dashing the besiegers' final hope of forcing the castle to surrender. Tursun Pasha commits suicide by drinking an overdose of sleeping draught.
The Turkish army lifts the siege and retreats eastward. The final chapter follows the concubines of the late pasha's harem, who witness the preparations for the forthcoming Siege of Constantinople.
The Council of War
Tursun Pasha's Harem
Other Turks
Albanians
The Siege was written during the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, and specifically during the period when the dictator was paranoid about a possible invasion by the Warsaw Pact. As such, the novel can be seen as a simple allegory, celebrating valiant Albanian resistance in the face of a more powerful enemy. Indeed, there are numerous anachronistic elements in the story which seem to allude to the contemporary situation - for example the Quartermaster-General's analysis of the Ottoman campaign in explicitly nationalistic terms, Sirri Selim's understanding of the germ theory of disease and scientific approach to biological warfare, the question of whether it is morally acceptable for scientists to be involved in military research (reflected in Saruxha's story about his mentor Saruhanli), and the concern expressed by Lejla at the very end of the book about a perpetual arms race.
However, in fact the Albanian garrison and Skanderbeg are peripheral characters in the novel, with the bulk of the story being told from the point of view of the besieging Turkish army. Moreover, the internal dynamics of this army are often directly reminiscent of Hoxha's Albania - like the dictator, Tursun Pasha presides over a number of squabbling lieutenants whom he plays off against one another to preserve his own authority, and he uses show-trials and artificial rumours of treachery to keep his army distracted from its defeats; likewise, just as those purged in communist Albania would be sent to hellish work camps, so the underlings whom the pasha scapegoats for the army's failures are sent to toil in "the tunnel". As David Bellos puts it in the afterword to his translation, "All these details make the Ottoman world, ostensibly the very image of Albania's Other, merge into an evocation of the People's Republic [of Albania]...Kadare's Turks are at one and the same time the epitome of what we are not, and a faithful representation of what we have become".[5]