Ljiljana was in charge of a staff of 16 in her department in a firm in Zagreb, and her husband worked with the Department of Internal Affairs. As tensions grew in 1991 in advance of the war, anti-Serb feeling in the Croatian capital was high. "I was the only Serb in the office, I was insulted every day until I couldn't bear it."
She and her husband left their jobs and their home in August 1991 and came to Belgrade. Ljiljana got badly paid work as a book-keeper and an accountant. Her husband got no work at all.
"Then during the war and the sanctions we saw there was more money in smuggling, so we opened this little shop," she said, standing at her stall in Belgrade's flea market. She has matching but chipped gold nail varnish on her finger and toe nails, visible through sandals. She sells cheap imported clothes.
There are hundreds of such stalls in Belgrade's flea market, selling clothes, cosmetics, hardware, and just about everything at lower prices than in the city-centre shops. Many stalls are run by middle-class professional people who can get no other work.
When they first opened in 1992 and 1993 they were stocked with smuggled goods. Now, realising that the black market is now a major part of the crippled Serbian economy, the state has moved to regulate it. Stallholders buy their supplies from officially licensed importers. They pay rent for their stalls and taxes on their profits.
Ljiljana, her husband and two children live on £200 a month now, she says. She misses having enough money for her children's education.
Radovan Bosnjak, selling cosmetics and toiletries to the impoverished middle classes, says it is very popular to blame "that bastard" for everything but he believes the west's constant punishment of Serbia is also unfair. "He [President Milosevic] lost everything in the war. He wanted a Serbia that would stretch to Chicago," he said, but now it is reduced to being a small, poor country.
"Ten years ago we used to go to Hungary and they envied us because they said our standard of living was German. Now it is the reverse."
He subscribes to the theory held by many Serbs that the Vatican, Germany and other powerful forces are always working against Serbia's interests. But Serbia's political leadership was also at fault. "Tito could play the game with Stalin, Churchill and Kennedy. Slobo can't beat a saxophone player [President Clinton] and a drunk [President Yeltsin]. His only success has been personally holding onto power."
Goran Pezic, selling car parts, says his business was much more lucrative when it was illegal. Now that he pays tax, his personal profits are down 25 per cent.
It is a comedown for the citizens of Belgrade to have to do their shopping in a dusty flea market. "Yes, the sanctions have had a lot to do with it, but they are only punishing the people and it is not we who made the decisions. It is the people in power who made the decisions."