Inside the camp is all that a poor, makeshift shelter designed for more than a thousand people can be. There are tin huts for families to live in as well as medical huts and other necessities. A children’s football pitch has been set up and there is a small tin-covered amphitheatre for occasional musical performances to lift the inmates’ spirits. The elderly and disabled – like the ancient Syrian man in a traditional keffiyah, staring out from his tin hut – have special facilities, including toilets, away from the large complex set up for everyone else. The people in this camp are mostly Syrians – perhaps 70 per cent today. The next largest groups are Afghans and Iraqis. The woman from Athens who runs the camp on behalf of the municipality is very proud of it and the innovative attitude she says they foster here. Here the people are not called ‘refugees’ or ‘immigrants’, she insists: they are ‘visitors’. The camp is progressive in other ways, which is why they are happy to allow journalists with the required permits to enter. The visitors are served three meals a day and unlike in other camps, including Moria, they are not made to queue. Meals are delivered to the doors of their huts. Clothes are provided for them to change into when they need them. A family from Syria sit by their hut, while a young man almost not yet ready to shave, his face still pimply, uses an electric shaver to remove his little stubble, a mirror in the other hand. A little girl of two or three has lost one of her shoes and struggles in the dust to put it on. We help her, she gets back up, runs on and falls straight over again.

For all the advantages of being in the camp at Kara Tepe, the problem for the ‘visitors’ here in the summer of 2016 is that they are stuck. Since the migrant flow of 2015, the other countries of Europe have shut their borders, meaning there is no opportunity for the flow across Europe of last year to recommence. These visitors cannot even flow up to Athens because the authorities realise that if a bottleneck is created on the mainland they risk creating entirely new problems. And so where once they would have spent no more than 48 hours in this place, and where a fortnight has caused troubles, some of these families have been here for months. Outside the camp, buying chips in sauce, are a girl of 17 and her seven-year-old younger sister. They are from Aleppo and have been here for between four and five months. They now have lessons here and there is an attempt to teach other skills, including music – even violin lessons – at the camp. But they do not know when they will go or where they or the other visitors will go to.