By Mick O'Reilly, Deputy Managing Editor
Near Al Salloum, Egypt-Libya Border
They come with bundles tied in knots any sailor or boy scout would be proud of, prams and suitcases, anything to hold their worldly belongings.
They huddle in groups speaking their native tongues, sitting where any space will allow.
They lie on colourful blankets donated by people to charities during Eid, Christmas or any other festive occasion where we are reminded to give.
These people, 10,000 in all, are grateful for anything given.
They are the dispossessed, the homeless, the temporary stateless, caught in a bureaucratic no man's land between freed Libya and the reforming Egypt.
Where Libya and Egypt share a line drawn in the Sahara these people are desperate, in need of their own freedom.
"They are forgotten about," a British official said, as he walked officiously over the outstretched feet on the colourful blankets. "In this hall, there are more than 500 of them."
There are many other such halls, many other such people.
"A lot of these people have been here for nearly three weeks," he said.
While more prosperous, more persuasive and more powerful nations have managed to evacuate their nationals, the remaining here are the poor, the paperless, the powerless.
They are Bangladeshis, Ghanians, Nepalese - a virtual United Nations of the underdeveloped world. They are the castaways of the events which have swept Libya since February 17, caught up in a collapsed dictatorial state.
There are 3,000 Bangladeshis here in this camp. Their government manages to bring out 125 most days on a flight from Cairo.
Companies employing foreign workers simply collapsed or closed their doors when the revolution began.
Most here have no passport, no papers, no way of getting home - wherever that home may be.
A host of agencies are here doling out water, blankets, basic food and cigarettes. But it is a delicate balancing act.
"If too much need is given then there is less pressure on their governments to bring them home quickly," one aid worker said. "It is a fine line between too much and too little."
Yesterday, a construction company truck pulled up at the Libyan side and deposited 17 workers from Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Nepal. (Now I know why such construction trucks with bins are called dumper trucks.)
The confused workers picked up their plastic sacks and packed and bundled and trudged along the one kilometre fenced roadway that crosses the line in the sand.
They struggled with their loads, literally trying to come to grips with the ropes and twine that held their bundles together for the walk - not to freedom, but to donated colourful blankets on the floors of halls, food parcels and free cigarettes. Not too much but just enough.
When their time comes to leave this place, processed and with papers and a ticket home with their bundles and their colourful blankets, they will shuffle through slow moving lines at Egyptian immigration, and then walk free of these holding halls on the line in the sand.
There, a fleet of Delta Line West buses which, like the people, have seen better days, will take them off to Alexandria or Cairo for a welcome flight home.
I road on such a bus yesterday, a brief glimpse into this life of the dispossessed, the downtrodden, the detritus. These were Egyptian, some of their one million countrymen who used to call Libya home, most now having left.
They were cheery, sitting among a mattress, a child's tricycle, cardboard boxes, and roped bundled of belongings.
They were homeward bound if not entirely home, freed if not entirely free, poor if not impoverished. Crying children clung to their mothers, a cook teased by his coworkers, men with hands hardened from harder work.
We joked in a language not of English nor of Arabic, more signs and symbols, goodwill not grammar.
In truth, though, sitting in this happy group of the relieved - it is too harsh to call them refugees - I was bothered.
Those words kept ringing in my ears: " In this hall there are more than 500 of them."
These are not "them".
These are people at the wrong end of the stick. In this world there are statues and there are pigeons. These solid people are statues, deserving of dignity and respect and more than a delicate balance of too much and too little aid.
I was bothered by this when I left the bus in Al Salloum, an excuse for a town if ever one was never needed.
Young boys drove donkeys and carts to the local bakery picking up warm fresh breads straight from the oven. I bought some and wondered to a tea shop to sit by the street, its litter, its moneychangers, its puddles and smells.
There I met a man who gladdened my day, lightened my heavy heart, made a little more sense of life.
Magdy Atia has good English, runs a import-export business in Alexandria and came to Al Salloum to help. He brought two cars loaded with rice and corn, tin fish and foods, bundled in neatly tied cardboard boxes, and drove them to this end-of-the-road spot to help.
"Why?" I asked - knowing but still needing to hear the words he would utter.
"Because they are my brothers," he said. "Why not?"
