It’s 6.30 a.m. on a late summer morning in Paris. Amid the rumbling coming from the Stalingrad Métro station, in the northeast of the French capital, hundreds of migrants, mostly men, sleep crammed under an overpass. Some rest on pieces of cardboard and old mattresses behind a urine-doused fence, others lie awake by the side of the street.
The ancient curse proclaiming that the Olympics must suck or the host country will descend into war continues.