By Maja Fićović
There was a time when all you needed for a day in Prizren was a free afternoon and good spirits.
Today, it seems, you need much more—although I still cannot figure out exactly what. Because what we did have—valid identification documents, patience, and the simple intention of visiting the city’s Orthodox shrines—was evidently not enough.
Prizren may be the only city where you can be escorted out before you are even allowed to enter.
No literary imagination is required to appreciate that paradox. Had Franz Kafka ever visited Prizren, he might never have written The Trial. Attending this year’s feast day celebration at the Monastery of the Holy Archangels might have been enough.
Because it is difficult to explain, by any logic, how the police can escort you out of a city they never allowed you to enter in the first place.
Prizren has survived emperors, empires and wars over the centuries.
Today, however, its greatest apparent security challenge seems to be a group of Orthodox pilgrims who, after attending the liturgy, wished to visit the Church of Our Lady of Ljeviš, the Church of St. George, and other Serbian Orthodox sites in the city.
I travelled from North Mitrovica to the Monastery of the Holy Archangels with an organized group of pilgrims. There were more than forty women on the bus and only three men, including the driver.
Before we even reached the monastery gates, we encountered extensive security checks.
Not the kind that inspires a sense of safety, but the kind that seems designed to demonstrate its own presence.
Everyone was searched.
Pilgrims.
Journalists.
Church officials.
Children.
Bags, backpacks and personal belongings were inspected repeatedly. Each time someone stepped outside the monastery grounds—to the parking lot or back to the bus—they had to undergo the same procedure again.
The atmosphere felt more like an airport before boarding a summer holiday flight than the entrance to a monastery.
The only things missing were an X-ray scanner and a metal detector.
Two female police officers carried out the searches of women—one in uniform, the other in civilian clothes but wearing a clearly visible police badge around her neck.
If the objective was to demonstrate seriousness, it certainly succeeded.
If the objective was to make visitors feel welcome, the outcome was rather different.
Looking toward the surrounding hills, I had the impression that this was not security for a religious gathering, but for an international summit.
Journalism is more than a profession—it is a way of seeing the world.
That instinct led me to briefly record what I was witnessing during the security checks. My phone was raised for only a few seconds before I was interrupted by a man in civilian clothes.
He did not identify himself.
He did not show any credentials.
Speaking in Albanian, he simply informed me that filming was not allowed.
I immediately stopped recording.
In democratic societies, police officers generally do not shy away from cameras. Quite the opposite—recordings often provide the best evidence that their work has been carried out professionally.
To be fair, I was not carrying my press credentials that day. I had not considered them necessary.
Still, I was left with the impression that the issue was not my accreditation, but the act of documenting the scene itself.
After the liturgy and the concert held in celebration of the monastery’s feast day, we prepared for the second part of our itinerary.
The plan was simple.
We wanted to visit the Serbian Orthodox landmarks in the city itself—the Church of St. George, the Church of St. Nedelja, the Church of Our Lady of Ljeviš, and the Prizren Orthodox Seminary.
That is what pilgrims do when they come to Prizren.
They do not travel there for restaurants or shopping.
They come for the city’s spiritual heritage.
As we boarded the bus, however, a police officer informed us that we would not be allowed to enter Prizren.
Instead, he said, the police would escort us directly to the highway.
I asked why.
The answer was simply:
„Because you can’t.“
I assumed something unusual must have been happening in the city. Perhaps there was a specific security threat or an extraordinary event requiring heightened measures.
I explained that we had no intention of walking through the city or gathering in public spaces.
We only wanted to visit the churches.
It made no difference.
The order, we were told, had to be carried out.
Apparently, a bus carrying a group of women from North Mitrovica represented a sufficiently high security risk to justify assigning a police motorcycle to lead us—not into Prizren, but straight to the highway, the only destination we were permitted to reach.
And so, for the first time in my life, I experienced something I would never have believed possible:
I was escorted out of Prizren without ever having been allowed to enter it.
Some will say it was a security assessment.
Perhaps.
But every security assessment also carries symbolism.
The symbolism of that day was unmistakable:
You may go to the monastery.
You may not go to the city.
For me, Prizren is not merely a point on a map.
Prizren is the right to walk through its streets to reach its centuries-old shrines.
This time, that right ended in a parking lot.
The pilgrimage ended on the highway.
The Prizren Orthodox Seminary remained behind a police decision.
So did the Church of St. George.
And Our Lady of Ljeviš—a UNESCO World Heritage site—was once again closer in photographs than it was across the few hundred metres that separated us from its gates.
They say security has no price.
That is true.
But every security measure also sends a message.
The message delivered to the pilgrims that day was not that they were welcome.
It was that they were being watched.
That they could reach the monastery, but not the city.
That they could pray, but not walk its streets.
That they could be guests, but not visitors.
The irony is that all of this happened in a city that, for centuries, symbolized coexistence, commerce, culture and the meeting of different peoples and traditions.
By the end of the day, one thought remained with me.
„Next year in Prizren.“
This year, however, those words carry a different meaning.
They no longer sound like a greeting.
They sound more like hope.
The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Radio Mitrovica Sever. The publisher is not responsible for the opinions expressed by the author.
Preuzimanje i objavljivanje tekstova sa portala KoSSev nije dozvoljeno bez navođenja izvora. Hvala na poštovanju etike novinarske profesije.
