Mar 15 2009
Visoki Dečani
Visoki Dečani Monastery, western Kosovo. Nate Tabak, 2009.
In quick succession, the black-clad monk administered a holy trinity of beverages: water (father), espresso (son) and raki (holy ghost) accompanied by chocolate and poppy seed cookies. A kamilavka hat concealed abundant gray hair that matched his beard whose length reflected what were most likely decades of celibate life in one of Serbian Orthodoxy’s holiest sites, Visoki Dečani monastery, in western Kosovo. This was a hardcore holy man, and his appearance made me think of the eerie footage of Serb paramilitary forces being blessed by a priest before they went on to perpetrate in Srebrenica the worst atrocity of the Bosnian civil war.
Yet, here he was graciously serving Kosovar Albanians, a French EULEX official and an American Jew — all guests at Visoki Dečani, protected by Italian KFOR soldiers who tote large assault rifles. It was a remarkable scene in what might assume to be a chamber in the Serbian nationalist heart, an organ that pumped bloody destruction throughout Kosovo and maintains that the country is Serbia despite clear evidence to the contrary. While these nationalists could hold up this awe-inspiring 14th century complex as a prime example of their claim, the monks here apparently have more important concerns in their lives devoted to God.
As I nursed my beverages — which brought relief to an empty stomach ravaged by deliciously acquired food poisoning and the Cipro treatment — a much younger monk, tall, slender with black hair and a couple of pimples, Ilarion, took a seat at the long wooden table on Decani’s second floor and began a wide-ranging talk that seemed to embody the very essence of Christ. Shifting at ease between English and Serbian, with helpings of Albanian and French, he made only a passing reference to this virulent ultranationalism when he politely declined to have any of his words recorded, citing potential exploitation by extremists. Indeed, he spoke of love, divinity, monastic life, the universal nature of religion, even throwing Descartes into the mix. I had wanted to ask him about the whole Kosovo problem, but it didn’t seem relevant or appropriate, though he probably wouldn’t have minded.
A few hours later, chants in Old Church Slavonic harmoniously mingled with incense inside Decani’s medieval house of worship, illuminated only by candlelight for evening prayers. Shadows danced along the walls and ceiling, where frescos depicting biblical scenes waxed and waned in lightness and darkness, punctuating their competing yet symbiotic influences of East and West in an allegory of modern Kosovo. Standing in the back of the church with my secular Muslim Kosovar Albanian companions, I saw Bashkim cross himself several times and Adrijana wipe away tears.
This is what Kosovo could be.
This is beautiful.
Beautiful!