3/28/2022
Maria Vasic
Recently, Kosovo Serbs were stunned—this time from joy. The tiny town of Orahovac in southern Kosovo and Metohija was inundated with hundreds of pilgrims who arrived there in a single day.
There have been no clashes on nationalistic grounds in Brezovica: They have lived and continue to live peacefully. No one here is surprised when a Serb helps his Albanian neighbor or vice versa.
Peter Davydov, Maria Vasic
Kosovo, in Vladyka’s words, was lost only for those who have lost themselves—in time, space, and faith.
My mother and father did everything possible so that we would never feel that we were practically living under occupation. A feeling of being at home, a sense of our native home—that’s what they gave us.
Since 1999, Serbian children never returned to their classes in their old school. It is the result of the “optimization of Serbian education,” the Kosovar way.
Hierodeacon Christopher
Somehow Kosovo is calling us, the people of the twenty-first century, lost in the chaos of our restless and spiteful world.
We are convinced by our own example that you “don’t walk over the doorstep without asking His blessing”—and, when your doorstep is in Kosovo, you simply can’t do anything without God.
The remaining Orthodox people subsist here solely by farming and a tenacity that can probably be described as unrelenting, and they stay because of their faith.
It’s odd though—the most frequent question we, the residents of Parteš, have had to answer was, “But aren't you afraid?” Aren’t we afraid to go to church, or gather in groups somewhere? Should we fear the joy of the Risen Christ, just tell me?
The unknown, the uncertainty, and fear have been the reality of our daily life for more than twenty years already.
The homes built by their great-grandfathers, where grandfathers and fathers resided, stay empty because the son – he is gone and resides with his family someplace abroad.
Not a great night if you lie down expecting a Molotov cocktail to be hurled your way. And what’s most important—you know for sure that not a single soul will come to your defense, there is simply no one left out there.
