Anand Giridharadas

PARIS, Texas — In this city in northeastern Texas, not far from the Oklahoma border, there would appear to be more antique shops than restaurants and more churches than both of those things combined.

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There is a lot of God in Paris, Texas — the Christian one, to be precise — and a lot of antiques, because there are a lot of old people dying and leaving their wares behind. What there’s not a lot of is dynamic young people. Those who can tend to leave for college and never come back.

But Paris is also an unmistakably charming town, with the Southern — more than the customary Texas Western — feel of a Charleston or New Orleans. And it is now having something of a renaissance.

A little more than a year ago, with little fanfare, this out-of-the-way Texas city elected as its mayor a man who is simultaneously (A) a Muslim, (B) a Republican, (C) a cardiologist, (D) a Pakistani native and (E) a really wealthy guy.

For my latest Currents column, I trailed Arjumand Hashmi, the improbable mayor of Paris, Texas, for a day. Because he is the mayor as well as a practicing cardiologist, he weaves in and out of each job throughout the day. He could be inserting a catheter in someone’s heart one moment, then on a surprise inspection of a city agency 15 minutes later, only to return to analyze some blood work at his office. To make all this work, he now wakes up at 3:30 a.m. and has donated part of his medical office to Paris, so that it can function as his mayoral office when he needs to wear that other hat.

Dr. Hashmi concedes that he has national political ambitions, but he is coy about them. The question, strangely enough, is whether voters elsewhere will be as open-minded as those in Paris, Texas, have proven.

But wherever he ends up, Dr. Hashmi may have a unique opportunity to build bridges in an age of deep divisions: he is, after all, a brown Muslim voted in with the support of droves of white Christians; a Lamborghini-rich doctor born in one of the poorest places on earth; a cowboy boots-wearing Texan who is also a Yale-trained jetsetter; and an American who has close friendships with the leaders of Pakistan, with which the United States has a hard, fraught relationship.

In the meanwhile, he has a city to turn around — and voters to win over. And he is trying to get used to them, too: “I’m still trying to correct people’s English in town,” he said, only half-jokingly. “I keep telling them they have an accent, but they don’t believe me.”