Tango’s memorial took place on a winter morning, in the park where he had lived.

“We’d put up notices all around the neighbourhood,” Clement says. “Around 15 people showed up: social workers, park attendants, nearby shopkeepers, his friends from the street. They had put a mattress on the ground and arranged candles and flowers all around it, along with his belongings - and some bottles of alcohol.”

Clement began the secular ceremony, talking about the man he had known. Others followed, sharing their stories. “Tango was very sociable,” he says. “Most people on the street die alone.”

“There was another homeless man who died recently at a street corner just up the road,” he says. “The local residents had been hostile, often calling the town hall to get rid of him. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they were happy when he died, but…”

Deaths like this can be sudden, and next of kin hard to trace. Until about 15 years ago, if no family could be traced, homeless people who died in Paris were buried by the municipality in a communal grave. “That’s still what many people in the street think will happen to them,” says Clement.

But organisations like his, and the Collectif Les Morts, now take over the process, organising simple ceremonies in a dedicated corner of the Thiais Cemetery outside Paris. The area set aside for homeless burials is called the Carré de Fraternité - the Corner of Brotherhood.

In Tango’s case, though, there was someone in his life.

“There was a niece,” Clement says. “Tango talked about her a lot, and had given me her number. I told her about the memorial, and she said she would come. She sent lots of texts leading up to it, but she never appeared. I think it was too difficult for her to confront what he had been through.”

Instead, she stepped in to take charge of her uncle’s body. Three decades after he had arrived in France full of hope for a brighter life, Tango’s body was repatriated to Morocco for burial.

After 20 years spent dreaming of returning home, finally, he did.