‘Even a Fire Alarm Makes Me Jump’- 24 Years After Childhood Trauma, Novak Djokovic Painfully Reveals How His Past Haunts Him to This Day

We know him as the 22-time Grand Slam winner. The current world number 3 tennis player battled it out with the top names in the tennis world. The Serbian braced to face the Federer onslaught. And dared to challenge the Nadal domination. However, there was once a time, Djokovic faced a different battle altogether – where every day was a struggle to stay alive in his homeland. Growing up in war-torn Belgrade left deep scars on the psyche of the ‘The Serbinator’, exposing his vulnerability, who is otherwise known for his tough and resilient nature on the tennis court.

In a lengthy interview with an Italian publication, Corrie Della Sera, he recounted the horrifying experiences while he was navigating his life through a war as a little kid.

Novak Djokovic shares horrifying personal experiences from the NATO raid on Belgrade

When asked to talk about his experience when NATO decided to bomb Belgrade for almost three months during the Kosovo War in March 1999, Djokovic narrated an agonizing tale. He described how he woke up to the sound of explosions and airplanes hovering in the skies.

“It didn’t happen on the first night, but on the second or third. The explosion woke me up, the crash of breaking glass.”

He further described, “It was three in the morning. There was smoke from bombs on the street. I fell, scraped my hands and knees, looked up and mine were gone, heard a rumble coming towards me, looked up at the sky and saw two F-117s go by. They fired two rockets at the military hospital, which exploded five hundred meters from us. The earth shook, everything was shaking… It was a trauma, even now I’m afraid of sudden loud noises.”