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.
Mr. Gassama had yearned to secure the requisite documentation to live legally in France, and his dream came true on Monday after a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron.
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.
Sitting across from Mr. Macron in one of the palace’s many gilded rooms, Mr. Gassama, wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, told the French president about the rescue. “Bravo,” Mr. Macron said, as the two men sat before TV cameras.
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Mr. Macron said in his statement that the Paris firefighters were “eager to welcome” Mr. Gassama into their ranks. He added that he had “invited” Mr. Gassama to apply for French citizenship, “because France is built on desire, and Mr. Gassama’s commitment clearly showed that he has that desire.”
Still, the rescue came amid a tightening of France’s immigration policy, and the French president was quick to clarify that Mr. Gassama was an exception, not the rule. Mr. Macron defeated the anti-immigration far-right leader Marine Le Pen in presidential elections last year, but immigration is still a deeply divisive issue.
A sprawling migrant camp near the northern city of Calais was dismantled in 2016, but hundreds of Afghans, Eritreans and Ethiopians continue to gather there in hopes of reaching Britain. In Paris, makeshift encampments of migrants under bridges and in parks are regularly evacuated by the police, only to grow again.
Mr. Macron has taken a tough approach. Parliament has been discussing a draft law put forward by the French government that restricts the rights of asylum seekers, a measure that has drawn fierce criticism from human rights groups.
Mr. Macron has said repeatedly that France could welcome only those with legitimate grounds for asylum, a point he reiterated in his meeting with Mr. Gassama, according to Agence France-Presse.
