PARIS — The 4-year-old boy seemed to be suspended from a balcony. An adult standing nearby seemed powerless to help. Disaster seemed the only possible outcome.
Then, to the nimble rescue on the streets of Paris on Saturday evening, came a young man whom some French people have started to call the Spider-Man of the 18th, referring to the area of Paris where the episode unfolded.
With a combination of grit, agility and muscle, the man hauled himself hand over hand from one balcony to another, springing from one parapet to grasp the next one up. A crowd that had gathered before he began his daring exploit urged him ever upward, according to onlookers’ video that was shared widely on social media.
Finally, after scaling four balconies, the man reached the child and pulled him to safety. And suddenly, an act of individual courage and resourcefulness began to play into Europe’s fraught and polarized debate about outsiders, immigrants and refugees.
The man, identified as Mamoudou Gassama, 22, is a migrant from Mali, a troubled former French colony in northwest Africa, who said he had journeyed through Burkina Faso, Niger and Libya before making the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing to Italy and arriving in France in September.
I told him that in recognition of his heroic act he would have his papers in order as quickly as possible,” Mr. Macron said in a statement on Facebook after meeting with Mr. Gassama at the Élysée Palace in Paris.
Mr. Gassama will be one of a lucky few. In 2017, only five people were granted residency papers for “exceptional talent” or “services rendered to the community,” according to statistics from the French Interior Ministry. In 2016, there were six.
https://www.nytimes.com/
Then, to the nimble rescue on the streets of Paris on Saturday evening, came a young man whom some French people have started to call the Spider-Man of the 18th, referring to the area of Paris where the episode unfolded.
With a combination of grit, agility and muscle, the man hauled himself hand over hand from one balcony to another, springing from one parapet to grasp the next one up. A crowd that had gathered before he began his daring exploit urged him ever upward, according to onlookers’ video that was shared widely on social media.
Finally, after scaling four balconies, the man reached the child and pulled him to safety. And suddenly, an act of individual courage and resourcefulness began to play into Europe’s fraught and polarized debate about outsiders, immigrants and refugees.
The man, identified as Mamoudou Gassama, 22, is a migrant from Mali, a troubled former French colony in northwest Africa, who said he had journeyed through Burkina Faso, Niger and Libya before making the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing to Italy and arriving in France in September.
I told him that in recognition of his heroic act he would have his papers in order as quickly as possible,” Mr. Macron said in a statement on Facebook after meeting with Mr. Gassama at the Élysée Palace in Paris.
Mr. Gassama will be one of a lucky few. In 2017, only five people were granted residency papers for “exceptional talent” or “services rendered to the community,” according to statistics from the French Interior Ministry. In 2016, there were six.
https://www.nytimes.com/
