ONLY A FEW METERS

The Orthodox cemetery in Pristina, November 2023. Where a monument once stood for decades, inscribed “Here rest the remains of Serbian soldiers fallen in the wars of 1912–1918,” there now stands a black marble plaque honoring French KFOR soldiers. The old monument has been pushed aside.

The French and German embassies, after public outcry, issued a joint statement: the monument was only moved, they said, “a few meters,” and “with the greatest respect.” No one consulted the families whose ancestors lie there, nor the Serbian Orthodox Church, which spiritually tends to the cemetery, nor, as the Pristina municipality claimed, even the municipality itself.

The reason the embassies gave: the monument had become “controversial” in Kosovo media, precisely because it honors soldiers who were, incidentally, France’s allies in that very war. Reconciliation, they said, needs room to breathe.

One user on X addressed the French ambassador directly: would he tell us where his own family’s graves are, so that we, too, might “pay our respects” by moving them “just a few meters.”

They say only a happy man has a true friend, and that a rare few especially fortunate souls have more than one. That word — ally, friend — no longer means much in a world that cuts our cap to fit its own head. There are only a few meters, left or right, whichever way happens to be convenient at the time.