"War is never a clean business. People are scattered like seeds," said a disaster veteran yesterday, as three buses marked "Ireland" drove out of Stenkovec 1, their human cargo awash with grief.
Packing had been easy. All they owned fitted into a couple of sports bags or cheap plastic bags bought in the camp kiosk. After a day dense with emotional leave-taking, they queued behind a wire fence for the buses, red-eyed, overwrought, unable to speak. And in that state, in showers and sultry heat, they were left to queue. And they queued some more, while Macedonian life ground to a virtual standstill for the arrival of President Scalfari of Italy. NGOs and officials, exasperated beyond endurance by repeated exposure to such political opportunism, anxiously scanned the flight schedules - yesterday alone saw 11 refugee airlifts from Skopje - and prepared contingency plans, as dozens of large Italians, profoundly incongruous in fine suits and shades, yelled into radios while closing off the highway, the camp gate and with it the bus departure area.
What amounted to a 30-minute drop-in finally took place in a dust-churning riot of limousines, media, officials and police, the big photo opportunity being the short stroll across the bus park to where several busloads of refugees bound for Italy and Finland - the former 2 1/2 hours late by now, the latter 90 minutes late - waited patiently. Then they all took off again in another hail of dust, leaving dozens of fuming officials and NGO workers in its wake. But the waiting refugees sat quietly, accustomed by now to living their lives by the programmes of others. Without complaint, they shuffled through the gate. Among them was Ms Cefsere Imeri (30) a saleswoman with a beautiful one-year-old child. She wept for the beloved sister whom she was leaving behind in Macedonia, for her mother and father still in Kosovo, for the nine people who had been killed in her village.
"I just want to be in Kosovo," she whispered. Behind her, a young boy sobbed helplessly, his hands tight round his eyes. A man who had come to wave off his friend nodded hopelessly. "I hope never to see scenes like this again in this life," he said. The friend turned back for one more farewell: "One step further from Kosovo," he murmured, before walking towards the bus.
In scenes that must resonate in the folk memory of any country that has experienced forced emigration, they placed their few belongings in the hold and boarded the buses.
What they left behind at Stenkovec 1 is a camp clearly in a state of tension. The camp's first demonstration, involving 300 inmates, was staged yesterday morning in protest at alleged police heavy-handedness over an attempted escape by a 25-year-old man. The UNHCR spokeswoman, Ms Paula Ghedini, tried to play down the protest by pointing out that it and a later one were carefully orchestrated to coincide with maximum media presence. "In any place with 30,000 people - even at one of your British football matches - you will find trouble of this kind," she said. But everyone acknowledges that feelings are running high as the airlifts gain momentum. Dark murmurings about bribery and worse fly around as some families there only a week are seen to have priority over others there a month. Diarrhoea in children is widespread and many are also manifesting signs of skin infections like scabies. "Taking people out may be easing the situation generally," said one official, "but it also heightens the individual tension."
But while some 2,000 refugees a day have been flown out to third countries in the past four days, easing the situation for the Macedonian government, the main border crossing at Blace remains effectively closed. Macedonian passport-holders allowed through talk of packed trains being turned back into Kosovo. One hundred people were said to be sitting in no-man's land.
Meanwhile, officials are girding their loins and their tempers for the next celebrity drop-in - rumoured this time to be Mrs Hillary Clinton.