Blood and Broken Glass: Remembering the Sarajevo Tram Attack

Sladic said that the projectile hit the tram when it stopped, and he and his father managed to get out quickly because they were close to the door. He cannot remember the scene exactly, but he does recall hearing "screams and noise".

"There was ringing in my left ear and I felt blood on the left side of my head… It was the first time I saw my father panic, as he used to be a calm and composed man," he said.

"Later on I realised his reaction was due to the large amount of blood on my sleeve and left part of my head. He ran out into the street and tried to stop a passing vehicle," he added.

At first, he continued, "passers-by did not realise what had happened, so they did not stop", but someone eventually drove him to a clinic.

On his arrival, the situation in the emergency room was chaotic. Only then did he realise that his entire sleeve was bloody, and he saw pieces of human tissue on his father's clothes.

A doctor told him that he "got off lucky", saying that he had a few small pieces of shrapnel in his head, next to his ear and temporal bone.

"For the next ten days I was unable to make out sounds with my left ear. All I heard was ringing. Twenty years later I learnt that 'tinnitus' is the medical term for the constant ringing in the ear, which is a consequence and a permanent reminder of the explosion on January 9, 1996," Sladic said.

He said that for a year or two after he was injured, he would become breathless each time he rode on a tram and when the vehicle juddered on the rails in front of the National Museum.

The reopening of the tram lines after the war was, he explained, supposed to mark "the end of the madness".

"At least that is how it seemed until that day, January 9," he said.

'Then...