It was quite serious and I needed an operation quickly. The ambulance drove me to a nearby hospital and as I lay on the stretcher in some pain, one of the paramedics started railing at me about Nato and Tony Blair and the bombing. The doctors themselves were charming and friendly and in spite of the power cuts and a continuing air raid, they operated on me extremely well, especially given the shortages of medicine and equipment thanks to UN sanctions. I later became friendly with one of the surgeons. But it was only as I left Belgrade the other day that he told me how some of his colleagues had criticised him for looking after me.
Tribalism can be more important than anything, even than the Hippocratic oath.
Poignant memories Difficult though it can be, especially at a time when we are discovering how abominable the sufferings of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have been, I learned a new affection for the Serbs. The people here who sent me the hate mail will probably say I was a victim of the Stockholm syndrome, whereby prisoners come to love their captors. I prefer to think it was because I learned a little fellow feeling. If a bomb had hit the hospital in the nights I was there, we would have all suffered - the English patient, along with the Serbian ones. When it really counts, your tribe does not mean anything.