They were hungry, anxious, wandering through the streets gathering in groups at streetcorners waiting for the news. Shops had closed for several days, the food stock had gone, they were reduced to waiting for humanitarian trucks to come and distribute bread, as if they were third-world refugees. They quietly fought for the precious loaves -- they were the old, the very young, the very poor, those who didn't have the means and the foresight to have left weeks ago. They were waiting for trucks and buses that never seemed to come, reduced to an unbearable uncertainty. They were those that the dream of Greater Serbia had left behind.

In the midst of that collective angst private nightmares would occur. Imagine being a mother, the head of a household, overwhelmed by the events, confused as to what was happening, unprepared for what had to be done, deciding in the last days that you had to move out. See yourself putting all your furniture out in the street with the conviction that a truck was to come, watching the hours go by, the light change, the clouds accumulate, the night come, and over the course of the next couple of days, the snowstorm. See yourself lie, your belly exposed to all, waiting for a truck that will never come while others leave, clogging the roads, realizing that the fated hour of transition to the Bosnians had come and all your life's possessions were still out in the street, vulnerable to the dreaded enemy.