The Farid family sold their television and carpets to raise the money they needed to flee the nightly US air raids in their city, the Afghan capital Kabul. With less than £100, the family including four boys aged from two to 12 years old embarked on the hazardous 125 mile journey to neighbouring Pakistan by bus, donkeys and on foot.
They arrived at the weekend in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, some 30 miles from the Afghan border, weary but relieved to have escaped the bombardments of the Taliban controlled city which shattered the windows in their home a week ago. "We were having heart attacks from all the bombings," said Zobaida, who is eight months pregnant.
"We lived near the Taliban areas and we were very afraid when we heard the air planes coming. Everywhere near the airport is destroyed and also near the area where we lived, Old Macroyan. People are injured, their houses are destroyed. I had a constant headache. Everyone in Kabul had a constant headache because of the bombardments."
The family was lucky to have close relatives living in Peshawar who have taken them into their modest brick two-room home, down labyrinthine unlit streets in a poor suburb of Peshawar.
With the new arrivals, there are 10 male children and four adults sharing the rooms, barely more than sheds off an enclosed courtyard, with whitewashed walls and bare light bulbs.
In honour of the guests, the two families dined on a traditional dinner of mutton korma and pilau rice on Saturday night, eating with their hands from communal dishes spread out on the rug-covered floor.
The Farids are ethnic Pashtuns, like the country's ruling Taliban Islamic fundamentalists who came to power in 1996 after years of internal fighting following the withdrawal of occupying Soviet forces in 1989.
"Nobody supports the Taliban this time," said Zobaida. "It is Pakistanis who are going to Afghanistan to do jihad against America, not the Afghan people. We are against America, Osama and the Taliban, all three. America has a lot of power to take Osama but it doesn't want to. It just bombards Kabul and kills people and Osama is safe somewhere else."
Zobaida's husband, Mirza Mohammed, said there was pressure on men to join the Taliban, with calls by religious leaders in mosques for Afghanis to fight the "war against Islam".
The UN's High Commission for Refugees has said testimonies of people fleeing Afghanistan consistently indicate that both the Taliban and the opposition Northern Alliance are trying to conscript men to fight in the war. However, Mirza Mohammed says he was not coerced.
He said: "The Taliban started demonstrations and they said 'come with us' but they didn't force us. But if I went to fight who would feed our children?"
The UN estimates that over 100,000 Afghan refugees have fled to Pakistan since the beginning of the crisis triggered by the September 11th terrorist attacks in the US.
A detailed survey carried out by UN's High Commission for Refugees in the North-West Frontier Province found about 65,000 new arrivals in Peshawar city and old refugee camps. There are no official estimates yet for the number of new arrivals in the more southerly province of Baluchistan.