Slobodan Filipovic was determined we would understand and that we would tell the world. He went from the garden to the house and returned with a bundle of rags. But it was the final straw for his wife who had sat in silence throughout our discussion of the murder of their son, Borko. Now her body shook with pain and she cried out, tears streamed down her face as her husband held up her son's jeans for us to see. One leg was little more than long strands of shredded cloth. The other, barely a few threads.
Borko Filipovic was killed on June 2nd by a landmine, freshly laid. His father is convinced the culprit was almost certainly a neighbour, someone they knew well. "They did this to their closest neighbour," he said. "Albanians should see what they have done. Yet these are the people I once went to with offers of money, flour and food when they were under pressure to leave."
The new Kosovo is not a place where former kindnesses or childhood friendships matter. The Filipovics are ethnic Serbs and now live in what they describe as an "open jail" in the 1,000-strong rural enclave of Gornje Dobro close to Gracanica, just south of Pristina, their lives totally dependent on the Swedish Kfor battalion's constant presence. They are typical of the bulk of this country's remaining 100,000 Serbs, one third of their pre-war numbers, living a precarious existence in guarded villages dotted around the countryside. A trip to another village to school, or to the capital, or to the Serb border in the north can be only undertaken with Kfor escort. A paltry 400 live under effective house arrest in Pristina. Now that existence is also threatened by hunger. The fields where the harvest should begin any day are potential death traps because of mines. That sort of clearance operation is beyond even NATO.
But the Filipovics are not about to leave, they insist. This is their country, their land, and they are determined to stay but are bitter at the daily provocations and threats. Some 1,000 Serbs have been killed in this province since Kfor came in last year yet not one killer has been successfully prosecuted. As many have disappeared without trace, and the burning of Serb homes continues. Eighty churches and monasteries have been destroyed.
Not surprisingly the family is not in conciliatory mood. They deplore the decision of local moderate community leaders, led by Gracanica's Bishop Artemje and his Serb National Council, to return, if only as observers, to the province's UN-led embryonic government, the Joint Interim Administrative Council (JIAC).
They support the hardliners of the rival Serb power centre of Mitrovice, and, like the rest of their community, they are adamant they will boycott October's municipal elections.
"We do not recognise them and will not take part," says Slavisa Filipovic, Slobodan's brother, arguing that the inability of exiled Serbs to return, or to vote from exile because Belgrade will not allow it, makes them a sham. Kfor's failure to stop the killings, he says, will make things even worse. "Within a year there will be no Serbs left." He insists the Serb police, "our police", should be allowed to return. In the neighbouring village of Preoce, the mayor, Zikica Jorgic, has even less empathy with the pain of the Albanian community. He, like the Filipovics, still insists he is part of the real Kosovo majority, defined in terms of the Serb majority of the joint populations of Serbia and Kosovo. He dismisses talk of ethnic cleansing by Serbs - "the Albanians left their homes of their own volition".
In the ancient monastery at Gracanica, the bishop's secretary, Father Slava Jancic, in his own right a prominent spokesman for moderation, acknowledges the injustices done to Albanians and blames the Milosevic regime for the plight of his own community. He would willingly see him handed over for international trial.
But the wrongs done to Albanians must not blind the international community to what is happening now to Serbs or to what he sees as the bad faith of the Albanian leadership, particularly in relation to their pledge to disband and disarm the Kosovo Liberation Army. Even "moderates", he says, such as Ibrahim Rugova, beyond ritual denunciations of killings, "have not lifted a little finger to protect non-Albanian people. I ask myself of the moderate Albanian leaders - are there any?" A recent massive arms find near the home of the former chief of staff of the KLA, now head of the unarmed Kosovo Protection Force, Gen Agim Ceku, has confirmed their worst fears.
He believes that the apparently separate killings are part of a co-ordinated campaign, not just the random expression of local ethnic hatred, but a strategic plan to deter Serbs from returning from Serbia and encouraging others to leave. The strategy, he says, is based on the idea that a critical mass is needed to sustain a Serb community in Kosovo. Below that the community will disintegrate, making the ultimate aim of Kosovan independence realisable, whether the international community likes it or not.
Father Slava is under no illusions about the scale of the gulf that has to be bridged in his appeal for what we would call parity of esteem. "The level of mutual hatred and mistrust is so great that if I were to walk in the streets of Pristina I would be dead within minutes," he says. He is almost certainly right.
The UN sought yesterday to reassure Kosovo's Albanians that it had not granted Serbs self-government within the province or their own parallel security force. Last week's deal promised the Serbs better security and access to services. The deal was "the exact opposite of cantonisation or partition", said the UN.
Tomorrow: Hope in divided Mitrovice.