Ragged and hungry, the Shah family arrived in Peshawar from war-torn Afghanistan yesterday, frightened and destitute.
The overloaded public bus they travelled aboard tumbled into the chaotic General Bus Station, in the centre of this north frontier city, shortly after 11 a.m.
The family had carried with them all they were able to salvage from their homes in the city of Jalalabad, 30 kilometres from the Pakistan border.
As they got off the bus, they looked around, bewildered. One of the girls, 10-year-old Amina, began to cry and huddled to her burqa-clad mother for comfort.
The younger children, hiding behind their older brothers and sisters, took in their new surroundings with startled eyes.
The family was made up of brothers: Kumar, (40), his wife and their five children, aged from 12 to two; and Najmuddin, (45), his wife and their 10 children, aged from 15 to one year.
The group left Jalalabad early on Saturday morning, unable to take any more of the US bombs.
They told The Irish Times they were as frightened of starving to death as they were of the West's campaign against the Taliban.
All weekend, crying children, mothers veiled from head to toe, weary fathers and hobbling elderly men and women have been arriving in dribs and drabs at Peshawar's main bus station after being smuggled over the border with Afghanistan.
Most of the families have come from the Afghan capital, Kabul, or Jalalabad, without official passes to cross the border at Torkham, which is still closed to the fleeing thousands.
The Shahs took a route used by so many other families in the last week.
"We got a bus from Jalalabad to the border and walked over at an unofficial crossing," said Najmuddin.
He said refugees are slipping across in their hundreds, many paying smugglers to guide them along mule tracks and footpaths.
The Shahs did well, in that they paid a total of 1,000 Pakistani rupees, or about £14, to a guide to get them across. Other families have been paying a lot more.
Once over the border they made their way to Bora, a sub-division of the Khyber Agency, where they took a bus to Peshawar.
The head driver at the bus station, Amjad Ali, yesterday said a total of 2,000 refugees had arrived by bus into Peshawar from Afghanistan over the last week.
Approximately 200 buses go to and from Bora to the bus station in Peshawar every day.
"At least every bus has one refugee family. Early morning and late in the evening we get more refugees. They prefer to travel in darkness because they do not have proper documents," he said.
"If we can, we bring them free of charge. Many have no money and are hungry after their journeys across Afghanistan."
Yesterday morning, he said, two refugees - a middle-aged man and woman - who had made it over the mountains into Pakistan died at Bora.
"It seems they died of exhaustion and starvation. The driver put the bodies in the bus and covered them. He left them at a refugee camp outside of Peshawar on his way here. It was either that or leave the bodies behind."
The Shah family spoke of the nightly bombing attacks on their city.
"Our children were crying and screaming every night when they heard the bombs falling. We have heard that people died. We do not know anyone who died or saw no bodies but we were told of deaths."
Because it is so near the border with Pakistan, food supplies are still getting into Jalalabad.
"But most businesses and schools are now closed. We are labourers and have not had work now for several weeks. We have no money left to buy food so we had to come here."
Syed Ali Ahmed and his wife stepped off the next bus from Bora with one trunk containing all their possessions.
It had taken the middle-aged couple, who have no children, five days and nights to get here from Kabul.
Syed had a cloth shop in the capital, but after the start of nightly bombardments by US planes, he closed up and decided to leave.
Kabul, he said, is a city devastated by the bombing. He described 10-metre deep craters left in the ground.
"About two thirds of the people have left Kabul and have gone into the hills or made their way to Pakistan," he said.
"It is harder and harder to get food supplies. Many more people are planning to leave. People are scared of the bombs and that when winter comes there will be no food."
The couple got to the border by car, taxi, bus, and at one stage on horse and cart. Syed spoke of hundreds of families on the move towards the Pakistan border.
He said many people are now frightened at the prospect of the Northern Alliance over-throwing the Taliban and marching victorious into Kabul. "They are worse than the Taliban. We don't want them."
The couple had no idea where they were going to stay in Peshawar. "We have only a little money left. I have a few addresses I was given in Kabul. I will try those."
While hundreds have been making it to the north-west frontier, the UNHCR yesterday said an estimated 10,000 refugees had poured over the border at Chaman in the south.
The human flood, mostly women and children, crossed despite the fact that the frontier remains closed to refugees.
In the chaos, there were reports of children separated from their parents.
Most crossing at Chaman were coming from the city of Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold and the nearest major Afghan city, 125 miles to the northwest.
People who had crossed spoke of many people in Kandahar injured by bombs and how bombs destroyed shopping bazaars in the heart of the city, killing and injuring shoppers and other civilians.
Many refugees said they had sold all they had for a chance to escape Afghanistan.
The UNHCR spokeswoman in Chaman, Ms Fatoumata Kaba, said many refugees were in very bad condition.
"Some are sick, some are hungry, and some have sold everything they had."
The UNHCR is predicting if the borders are opened between Afghanistan and Pakistan up to 300,000 people would flood in over a very short period of time. Arrivals could eventually total one million, said Ms Kaba.
Meanwhile, at Peshawar bus station, the Shahs did not know where they were going to spend their first night in Pakistan. As they had come across unofficially, they were not registered as refugees. Their first priority yesterday morning was to get food and water for their children
"We have not eaten for 24 hours," said Kumar. "We have no money. The younger ones are weak with hunger."
Minutes later, lugging their worldly belongings, they slipped away into the Peshawar crowds.