Today he has won over much of the city. (His first council election was 4-3 in his favor; he was re-elected this year 7-0.) Local citizens speak of him variously as a blood transfusion and a breath of fresh air, even though some in the old guard retain their anxieties.

Part of his strategy has been to embrace his newness to the city, where he arrived in 2006 after many years in Tampa, Florida. He says that, because he is an outsider, no one in Paris is his cousin or classmate, and that he is thus free to govern by reason. He says he is trying to save the city from the cronyism that he has seen strangle his own country: “In most of third world countries, yes, there are rules and laws and regulations. But it ends up that related people get things done,” he said. He saw that same phenomenon afflicting Paris. “I have lived it personally and seen why it doesn’t work,” he said.

U.S. politicians are wont to conceal the complexity and worldliness in their backgrounds — as with Mitt Romney’s ability to speak French or President Barack Obama’s early years in Indonesia. Dr. Hashmi takes a different approach, speaking Urdu to friends or family in front of his colleagues, answering the phones with “Salaam aleikum” at times and at times with “How ya doin’?” His Pakistani accent remains strong.

Just after 11 p.m. that same night, after a full day’s work twice over, he was sitting on a sofa at home with his family and some friends, nibbling on flaky cookies specially bought in Lahore.

His beeper sounded. A middle-aged man was at the hospital with chest pains, and the emergency room doctor wanted his advice. He asked for an electrocardiogram to be texted to his iPhone. When he saw it, he concluded that the man needed him. He told the doctor to prepare the catheter, and he drove away down a dark country road into his Paris.

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