Worse, their memory is being besmirched through government's tagging of them as part of the more than 900 'terrorists' killed in the
siege.
de' Mussi's account is probably secondhand and is uncorroborated; however, he seems, in general, to be a reliable source, and as a Piacenzian he would have had access to eye-witnesses of the
siege. Several considerations incline me to trust his account: this was probably not the only, nor the first, instance of apparent attempts to transmit disease by hurling biological material into besieged cities; it was within the technical capabilities of besieging armies of the time; and it is consistent with medieval notions of disease causality (22).
By deciding not to explore what actually happens to the people who are interned, or the profound conflicts in politics and national identity for Arab Americans (and, given the anti-foreign backlash, for many immigrant groups),
Siege buttresses the notion that politics and identity are static and unresponsive to changes in the collective experiences of specific racial or ethnic groups.
From April 16 onwards, a few people were allowed to escape the
siege, first two ill Franciscans and the four nuns, then some Palestinian youths, followed by the Armenian monks, and some wounded or dead Palestinians.
All of the pseudoclinical forays into alleged teen ghastliness in Parents Under
Siege are set quite didactically in relief beside the authors' serene Buddhist spiritual pretensions.
Some of the proceeds of
Siege's sale will be used to purchase four new yearlings to race in 2000 and to improve the luxury facilities at Ascot for members of the club.
In the final three chapters there is a move away from this descriptive approach in order to confront the thematic use of
sieges as figures for the nature of history, salvation, temptation, and love in works as varied as the redactions of the
sieges of Troy and Jerusalem, and allegorical works.
For example, during the Freemen
siege, all TPIs were fully briefed before and debriefed after each contact.
At the beginning of the
siege, all those hills and mountains - Trebevic, Jahorina, Igman, Bjelasnica - became artillery positions.
In "Blockage Diary Addenda: Notes Under
Siege" Ginzburg recounts, in hindsight, how they bad all miscalculated "how it would be," how historically the boundary between lies and truth becomes blurred.
Nevertheless, A Sense of
Siege makes clear that the most exigent problems lie in the Muslim world and in the here and now.
All this has been preserved, to some degree, despite the war and the
siege. Every day people are killed and wounded; in one recent week, thirty-one people were killed and 194 wounded.