A two-way road.

In 1991, Luka and ten of his comrades were captured near Knin, a Croatian town held by rebel Serbs and the Yugoslav Federal Army. Luka spent a few months in the Knin jail. The first days he was left without food or water. He kept refusing to submit himself to the guards, so they would often take him to the top floor and beat him until he would pass out. After-wards, they would drag him down, his head banging against the stairs, throw him naked into a solitary cell and leave him there for the night. In the morning, they would throw him back to his comrades, half-conscious. He would lie there before other men, covered with bruises and boot marks, completely helpless, broken, barely breathing. Each time his comrades would carefully spray his face with water and wipe blood off his lips, sure that this time he would die. But, each time Luka returned to life. He would look like a zombie and repeat deliriously over and over again that he had done nothing wrong, stolen nothing , and killed no one, just fought for his country. Everybody wondered what gave him the will to live. Did he think of anything else but his homeland? " Don't resist them any more " , they kept telling him, " if they do this to you one more time, you won't survive. " But, a week after the last beating, the guards would take him away again, and he would return from the dead again. Soon everyone from the jail cell got gastroente-rocolitis, and the prison doctor sent them, Luka too, to the Knin city hospital, partially turned into a prison hospital. The patients from his room said that he did not receive any medical attention for full two weeks, that he was not checked on morning rounds, and that food would just be thrown on his bed. He was saved by a sudden exchange of war prisoners. My medical team covered the exchange. We carried thin and swollen Luka's body to our ambulance. He lost consciousness several times during the trip from Knin to Split. The surgeons in Split diagnozed a subdural he-matoma, lung contusion and hemoptysis, subcapsu-lar hematoma of the spleen and liver, subcapsular hematoma of the kidney and macrohematuria, serial rib fractures on both sides, fracture of the right forearm and leg, and inflamed hematomas all over his …