Like a scene from a cold war movie featuring Berlin's checkpoint Charlie, a lone man appeared from the shadows of the deserted Serbian customs post and walked out into the bright sunshine towards the Albanian border 100 metres away.
The night before the Morine border post had been teeming with humanity, with lines of tractors, cars and trucks crammed with people passing into Albania in a constant stream. Then at 3 a.m. Serbia, having announced that refugees could return home, had abruptly closed the gates and the border went quiet. In the hot afternoon, Albanian soldiers, together with journalists, aid workers and policemen watched in silence behind Albania's red iron frontier barrier as the man, in civilian clothes, walked quickly towards them. The pale faces of Serb snipers who had spent the morning digging in around the Serb customs post could plainly be seen as the man skirted the concrete in "dragons' teeth" anti-tank bollards that block a section of the road on the Serb side of the frontier.
The watchers braced themselves for a shot, but none came. Instead, the iron gate was raised and the man, 27-year-old ethnic Albanian Ismet Hojhaj, walked in to deepen the mystery.
He had no idea why the Serbs had let him go, nor did he know what had happened to the estimated 50,000 refugees who had been in a 12-mile line behind the Serbian border the day before waiting to cross.
"I walked here from Prizren my home," he said.
"The Serbs thought I was KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] but they let me go, they told me you are free," he said. And with that he walked off, hitching a ride to Albania's border town Kukes and passing bemused western charity workers who were busy setting up a group of white tents to give first aid to refugees.
Aid workers were also puzzled by both the border closure and the disappearance of all those who had been waiting to cross.
"All of a sudden it stopped," said Ajmal Khybary, of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
"What is behind their thinking I could not speculate. But it is a concern for UNHCR if the people who want to flee persecution are not allowed to leave."
NATO has formerly rejected Serbia's call on Tuesday for an end to the bombing in return for the repatriation of all the people who have been expelled.
In Kukes hospital, one man, a farmer called Shaquer, who was wounded in the thigh by shrapnel when Serb artillery targeted his village last week, said he would refuse to go home under a Serb offer of amnesty unless NATO would come with him. "No, not go, I would not go back there," he said. "But with NATO it's OK, with NATO everything is OK."
Some of the refugees think they know what is behind the Serb decision to stop the deportations and keep the Albanians in Kosovo.
Adria, who fled from Kosovo's capital Pristina last week, said the Serbs were worried about an escalation of the bombing by NATO.
"They [the Serbs] are preparing some kind of self defence for their land," said Adria.
"If NATO is seriously an enemy of the Serbs, then I think the Serbs are going to use the people as human shields."