Hope rises from a tortured land

A week after the revolution, I went to Belgrade. I had to see the change for myself. I have waited for it for so long. To take away the guilt. The guilt of being born in Serbia, the guilt I have carried for things I have never done.

A week after the revolution, I went to Belgrade. I had to see the change for myself. I have waited for it for so long. To take away the guilt. The guilt of being born in Serbia, the guilt I have carried for things I have never done.

The policewoman behind the passport control desk was smiling. To everyone. She spoke English. She said have a nice stay. I had barely digested the initial shock when the next one hit me: I remembered the days when not a single bag went through unopened; when one trembled in anticipation of the customs officer's order: "go there and pay first". For what or how much seemed totally irrelevant and, more to the point, very few dared ask.

I began to feel as though I was falling through Alice's rabbit hole. Then the customs officer said it again: have a nice stay. And that was that. I was free to go.

An hour-and-a-half later, I was sitting in my favourite coffee bar, Belgrade Window. It's a combination of a gallery, a bookshop and a café, overlooking Republic Square in the city centre. It was a beautiful sunny day, the fountains were actually working, the square was heaving with people talking and (again) smiling. How strange, I thought: for years happiness was the privilege of the chosen ones - criminals, police, politicians or anyone who profited from Milosevic. The rest of us had only fear.

It was fear that made me leave Serbia eight years ago. The dreaded happened. While I was working in the hospital finishing my houseman year, the military police visited my family home and demanded my mother tell them where I was. They wore dark blue uniforms, they had machine guns and they wanted me to go to Croatia to fight. My mother cried; for me, for her country. A country that was once so beautiful, a country that defied the division of east and west, a country where people were happy, carefree and could travel where they wanted; a country where students studied and planned their future (in the past 10 years more than 200,000 students and graduates have fled for the same reasons I did). She cried, but she didn't falter, she didn't say where I was. As soon as they had gone she rang me.

Thirty-six hours later I was on the train crossing the Czech border. A single suitcase - not nearly big enough for my clothes and my memories - and £200. I vowed there and then, sitting in the train and looking through the window at Prague's suburbs, not to cry and to follow my mother's example. I would not falter.

My departure had come 12 years after Tito's death. In the years since 1980 there had been a brutal, but slow awakening. People didn't realise it initially. I remember in 1982 someone telling me that the Yugoslav passport was worth £2,000 on the black market. The reason was simple: it didn't need any visas. Foreigners admired the Adriatic coast then. And Yugoslavs were proud to be Yugoslavs. Serbs, Croats, Muslims, Macedonians lived together. National identity, that most abused term, was dormant. No one cared about it. People enjoyed life in the land of opportunity.

But in the mid eighties, national wealth was slipping away. It became common knowledge how much money the former Yugoslavia owed - how much Tito had borrowed. People began questioning the cult of Tito. A handful of top politicians seized the moment, following the textbook "how to stay in power" rule: when the economy starts going down it is time to reawaken national identity, to blind the people with something, anything, to divert attention. And they abused that to the maximum. The brainwash had begun. Serbs were suddenly Serbs and nothing else, recollecting the 500-year occupation by the Turks; Croats swore they existed as a separate nation 50 centuries ago; Slovenians realised they were miraculously related to Habsburgs; Bosnians suddenly remembered that the Bosnian nation as such didn't exist. They were either Serbs, Muslims or Croats. The media fuelled the "facts" and day by day, the economy inched further down.

Eventually, in the late eighties, there was a final attempt at unity. Six leaders of the six former republics met six times. The significance of the sixes escaped the most observant eye. Quite unhindered and, it seemed, quite abruptly, they achieved the unbelievable: they made 22 million Yugoslavs begin to hate and kill each other. Once the first drop of blood was shed, the self-perpetuating process had begun.

Over and over I asked myself two simple questions: could Milosevic have stopped this? And how did he suddenly become a cult figure, obscuring even Tito? I think he could have stopped it. But he didn't, he vehemently opposed the confederation solution. The answer to the second question is rooted in the first. Instead of really thinking about the future of the nation, Milosevic fuelled the national identity issue further by cunningly involving more and more Serbs. He promised Kosovo to the Kosovars. He promised a better future for the "chosen nation" - the Serbs.

Initially, the vast majority believed him. It didn't take long however - a couple of years at most - for people to realise this led to chaos and destruction where only those loyal to him and to the mafia profited. But, by then, the economy was collapsing and he controlled the country, the police, the banks, the mafia, everything. Serbs went undercover, whispering about the system. Then they went onto the streets. It took nine years for Milosevic to realise it was not the Serbs he represented, but devious ideology and a minority of the blindest followers and criminals. It took nine years for the nightmare to end.

I worked in a restaurant. I couldn't work as a doctor because I couldn't speak Czech fluently and the last thing Czechs (or anyone for that matter) wanted was a Serb entering the health service. So I washed dishes. A month and a half later I was managing the restaurant. One afternoon in 1993 I took the daily takings to the bank. I didn't know one of the notes was fake.

As soon as I identified myself to the bank clerk I was surrounded, initially by bank security officers and then by the police. "He is a Serb", I could hear people whispering. That's when I came closest to breaking my vow. Every single person in the bank was looking at me, arms handcuffed behind my back, being taken away. I wanted the ground to open. I wanted desperately to cry.

I hated my country for that. I resented every single thing about it. I cursed the place I was born. I loathed the system and Milosevic. Twelve hours later they let me go. Physically unharmed. Emotionally scathed. But I appreciated my luck - the police inspector had a cousin who was married to a Serb.

It was in Prague that I met my wife, an Englishwoman, in 1993. I was granted a visa for Britain only after we were married, at the height of sanctions, in my hometown of Leskovac, southern Serbia, in January 1994. My wife's relatives and friends had to queue for 18 hours at the Bulgarian border to cross into Yugoslavia.

We have been happily married for the past seven years and have a wonderful daughter. I passed the necessary exams to practice medicine in the UK and, without really noticing, became British.

It was a Briton/Yugoslav/Serb who sat in that café in Belgrade, sipping coffee and observing. I can only compare the change to the difference between a steam room and a sauna. In the former you can just about see people as vague silhouettes through thick mist; in the latter, you see clearly. It is as literal as that. The mist has gone, the shadow has passed. The years of suffering, suppression and fear, the years of life being reduced to that of an animal in a rundown zoo - food and sleep - are over.

The years of misery which oozed from the windows, penetrated the food and soured the water have gone. People can see each other now. They don't fear any more, their faces radiate hope.

For the first time since I left the country, I felt safe. In the past there was always fear; fear of being stopped by the police, of a criminal misinterpreting a casual glance, fear of having to depend on the legal system. Because everything was - one way or another - controlled by Milosevic. He controlled the police, he had his men in every key position in society.

Now the pyramid is crumbling. People are awake and aware of the difficulties of the coming era. They know it will take time. They have all the time in the world. They want to restore the country and their reputation. A reputation unjustly taken away from them for the sake of one man.