Zoran Planinic woke up to air-raid sirens when he was 10 years old and followed his mother and older sister downstairs into the basement.

Living in Mostar, a city in Bosnia-Herzegovina, his family ate from humanitarian aid packages during the war in the Balkans.

For six months they were without electricity. For 10 days, he was without his father, Jozo. The family had made frantic attempts to reach Jozo as he was fighting for Croatia but heard nothing. Then one day, Planinic saw his father through the basement window, walking through the door of the apartment building.

The war stretched for four years, but its scars are still embedded in Planinic's consciousness at age 20.

"It was hard," Planinic said Friday, sitting in the lounge bar of the Regency Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. "But we made it somehow."

Shrugging, he added, "That time I have kept to myself; I don't think about it."