As I write we are witnessing the most grotesque siege in modern history, even worse than Sarajevo. The notion of enclosing a people within walls and slowly squeezing the life out of them is one that modern warfare in general seems to forego, as though there isn’t time for this kind of operation in an accelerated modern world. Kadare's novel documents the siege of an Albanian fortress by the Ottomans. As the afterword makes clear, the novel is functioning on many levels that perhaps will pass non-Albanians, or Balkans by, but the dynamics of the operation are cogently described, as the attackers, realising brute force will not do the job, try to cut of the fortress' water supply and finally use disease in their flawed bid to conquer. Both sides are so immersed in the brutality of war that ethics no longer appear to be a consideration, albeit the way the novel is framed, the attackers are the ones whose moral compass seems most awry. Typing this, and knowing what is happening even as I write in Gaza, generates a sense of unease, as well as an awareness of how much aerial bombardment has skewed the balance of siege warfare in favour of the aggressors. All war is grotesque, but when a civilian population becomes caught up in the horror, the concept of genocide comes into play, the futility of which is something the novel's most philosophical section touches on. In another moment, Kadare's novel might have felt like more of a curiosity, but its ongoing relevance has been made tragically apparent over the course of the past weeks.
(Incidentally, where the novel posits the muslim invaders as the aggressors, the instances of siege in modern Western history have tended to be waged against muslim civilians.)
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