Lawyers and lorry drivers, sales staff and schoolteachers, they queued up in the sultry heat of a Balkan spring outside the small tent marked Ireland, in search of an elusive thing called hope.
Fat cockroaches crawled across the dusty earth beneath them in the vast camp called Stankovic 1, as they scrutinised the alien map of Ireland and read the leaflets about their rights and conditions once they get there. Contrary to our own high opinion about our myriad attractions, there were no whoops of gleeful anticipation, no plots being hatched to milk the Irish tax-payer dry. They looked simply lost, exhausted, defeated.
Ireland was never a first or natural choice for this mainly Muslim people. That might have been Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, or the US, where many of their kin have worked and settled. Ireland then, is just a way out of this terrible place, an escape route from the endless queues and crowds and dust and smells and unchanging diet of cold tinned fish and meat.
The mother of Marigona Azemi, an angelic but wary-looking two-year-old, lifts the child's top to show the livid mark on her back where the paramilitary bullet that killed her grandmother grazed the child as they were fleeing Kosovo. Yesterday, Marigona, with her parents Ismail and Deljane and three brothers, shared an orderly but stifling tent about 16 metres long with 100 others.
They speak no English, and know nothing about Ireland. But their desperation to leave is palpable. Ireland will do. What little they do know about Ireland is culled from television news reports. Gerry Adams is an astoundingly familiar name, a bit of a hero who basically, fought the British to get back what was Ireland's.
The simple view is that what the Serbs are to them, the British are to us. As they prepared yesterday to leave behind all that they have ever known - to embark on a plane with people who are countrymen to be sure but with whom they have as much in common as a Dublin lawyer might have with a subsistence West of Ireland farmer - they swore to return.
Besim Lekiqi, a biology teacher, has a wife and two sons, aged 17 months and five months. After being given three hours to leave their village by 200 trigger-happy soldiers with 20 tanks, they fled by tractor and on foot, on a 10day journey to Macedonia.
Pointing to the tents, the ground-sheets, the queues, he says : "For my children's sakes, we must go to Ireland. But I hope not to stay too long. . . " Words fail him. Tears glisten and his hands ball into fists as he searches for words powerful enough to express his determination. "My greatest wish in life is to be back in Kosovo. Above everything, I want my sons to be raised in Kosovo." How that will be achieved is anyone's guess.
Mirad Latifi, a 38-year- old lawyer from Vucitrn, who will travel to Ireland with his wife and two boys aged seven and 13 months, talks about the betrayal by his Serbian friend and neighbour of 30 years in a voice that still sounds bewildered. His friend is a police reservist.
"I would have done anything for him. I used tell him if the KLA came, I would die before I would let them take him. But he came with them and he saw me there and I stood and watched as he helped them burn my house."
His wife, he says, is "reborn" at the news that they are off to Ireland. He is a pacifist through and through. Non-violent solutions must always be sought, he says: "It is always the innocent civilians - Serb and Kosovar Albanians - who suffer most. But at the same time, I think the air-strikes are the only way to stop Milosevic."
Meanwhile, in the Irish tent, the process of information giving and clarification continues. Agim Bytyqi, a personable lorry-driver with two sons aged eight and five, reveals that he has two brothers already living in Ireland. They met two Irishwomen while working in Switzerland, married them and settled happily in Ireland, working as chefs and buying their own houses in Clondalkin.
Agim's wife is a fourth-year medical student. Their greatest hope is to have her resume her studies. Before fleeing to the mountains, Agim dug a hole and hid her textbooks and papers in a field.
Brendan McMahon, Irish Ambassador to the Vienna-based Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, sent to Macedonia by David Andrews, Minister for Foreign Affairs, oversees the operation, while Martina Glennon from the Refugee Agency does her best to prepare them for what lies ahead.
She tells them about their social welfare, health and education entitlements ("the same as Irish citizens"); that they will live "in the country" with other Kosovan people, will share their cooking and dining facilities. She tells them they will have the right to work; that English is the spoken language and that they will get language training.
"And we will try to ensure that you have a normal life." She repeats a central message: "This is a temporary protection programme. You will be allowed to stay for one year or until the situation in Kosovo gets better. Obviously if it is resolved sooner, you will come back. . . "
She shows them Ireland in the map of Europe, then a detailed map of Ireland, pointing out Dublin, the capital, then Cork and Kerry where they will stay.
"Now," she asks, "do you still want to come to Ireland?"
They nod gravely. And the promise of new life struggles with a terrible desolation.