In the narrow waters separating the Greek island of Lesvos from Turkey, the ferryboat skimmed through a tranquil sea which, this year alone, has consumed an estimated 200 souls, with their drowning hopes and dreams. Arriving into Mitylene harbour, the vessel passes under the gaze of the Statute of Liberty, Eleftheria, standing on the point, a beacon proudly beaming her hope of freedom eastwards.

Throughout 2015, the town was submerged by a flood of refugees, in their thousands, inundating nearly three kilometres along the ferryboat quay, the promenade along the harbour front, and into the little parks set behind the central waterfront. That swarming mass of dark-shaded, odorous, and tragic humanity that had continuously engulfed the entire geography had now vanished.

Optimistically I hoped that now I might find a hotel or pension room.

Previously all were fully occupied by those fortunate refugees with means.

Instead, all rooms were taken by aid workers and their volunteer cadres. That night in the newly-opened café with the new Syrian menu, there were no Syrians, only a group of Europeans and Americans, partying until dawn.

Gone was the desperation of victims in a daily struggle for existence, the travesty and humiliation displayed in huddles on every square metre of surface space. Replaced, it seems, by an aid workers’ jamboree.

Boarding a ferryboat a few days later, I found the refugees again. There was the bus with darkened windows, reversing slowly onto the ferryboat, bordered by a perimeter of lightly armed police, donning surgical gloves. In the saloons and deckside were the families, with their children, bundles and blankets. Walking past one lounge I noticed policemen in the aisles, enclosing a section of darker young men.

“We are taking them to Kavala, and there our duty ends …” The policeman from Mitylene’s analysis continued: “Every day we have new orders.” The officer interrupted himself to address a 15 to 17- -year-old youth, squirming to draw attention to his wrist, with some half-smiling and apologetic grimace of pain. The handcuff pressed a little deeply into his flesh, hoisted on the seat-rest between him and his fellow captive, to whom he was chained.

On deck outside, four freely sitting Syrian youths were singing phrases of various popular Arabic songs, in celebration of departure to a land of better hopes. A northern American volunteer, laughing excitedly, began to ply them playfully with ‘hellos’, and ‘what is your name’ in rudimentary Arabic. Returning to the side of her Spanish and Scandinavian travel companions, she proclaimed valiantly how virtuously defiant she had been in resisting the Syrians’ supposed propositions, saying “I won’t be sleeping with a bunch of savages”.

“What is the difference between those handcuffed in here, and those gallivanting about on deck?” I asked the unarmed policeman inside.
“These are the ones under our control,” came the answer, with a forgiveness-seeking shrug, as if to say, the key to that Pandora’s box had been thrown away. With aid budgets had come organisation, health checks, sanitation, free accommodation in camps, new orders daily, aid workers and volunteers, and … handcuffs.

What crime did they commit? The armed policeman’s answer: “They entered the country illegally.” Six months ago they were freely sheltered around the Statute of Liberty, and today in handcuffs? But you are a Greek …
“There are politicians in Europe that vote for certain laws …” I stopped him and his growing discomfort there – no need to press on.
Outside again, I heard one of the young volunteers enthusiastically explaining with imperfect English that they were being transferred from Mitylene to a northern town, bordering FYROM.
“We are going to push down the fences and over the border.”

For many months during 2015, Eleftheria proudly stood tall, sheltering the neglected and muddled mass of Middle-Eastern humanity encamped haphazardly everywhere around her. Today I saw her barren, and them once again, but with some in handcuffs.

Eleftheria symbolically faces eastward at an ever-present threat since the times of Xerxes and Xanthos, but one begins to wonder if her back is covered from the threat emerging once again, from the opposite direction. A statue of stone, devoid of tears, which perhaps, when she was alive, filled the sea sloshing around today beneath her.

With the ferry’s departing wake, the surf’s small breaking waves crashed frantically on boulders at her base, desperately splashing up, as if to revive her spirit, with the hopes and dreams of the drowned.

* Royo Lloyd has written extensively on economics, politics and travel during a 35-year career in investment banking and economic development, in a lifetime spanning five continents, having spoken four languages.