Children Beg for Bread; Mothers Boil Their Own Sons

Chapter 4 catalogs the siege's atrocities in relentless detail. The rich who wore purple now scavenge in the streets. The young men who once glowed like rubies are now blacker than soot, their skin shriveled on their bones. 'Those killed by the sword are better off than those who die of famine — racked with hunger, they waste away.' Then the line that stops every reader: 'With their own hands compassionate women have cooked their own children, who became their food when my people were destroyed.' This is presented not as an accusation but as testimony — the siege was this bad.