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

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ByJunaid

May 23, 2023 | 12:15 PM EDT

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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

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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.”

Elaborating on the deep psychic wounds from the war that never left him, Djokovic further added, “Even a fire alarm makes me jump.”

Furtherexpunding on the pain and the trauma inflicted on his family, Djokovic revealed, ” For me, it was like a game, but for my parents it was terrible stress: fear, the queue for bread, the hour of electricity a day in which my mother had to cook as much as possible… “

Novak Djokovic on the costs of war

As someone who has witnessed war first-hand, Djokovic gave an apt description of the brutal nature of wars. “War is the ugliest thing in life, man’s worst invention, the worst idea in history, ” Djokovic said.

He described how war brings with it the tragedies of hunger, psychological torment, and loss of loved ones.

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Read More: Who Are Novak Djokovic’s Brothers?

Moreover, the tennis star also shared his opinions on the ongoing Ukrainian conflict. He talked about the destroyed cities, adding, that the actual effects of war are invisible, like the incalculable costs of losing a loved one.

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Djokovic’s personal experiences serve as a testament to the grave consequences of war, and the far-reaching effects that it can have on people even when the bombs cease to fall.

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