13.11.2022 14:39
Split
!["Nasseri]("https://static.dw.com/image/63738674_303.jpg" "\"Nasseri")
With his legal status unclear, the Iranian who inspired the Tom Hanks film The Terminal has taken Charles de Gaulle as his home. He befriended employees who provided him with food, books and medical care. A man who had lived at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris for 18 years died on Saturday (December 11) after a heart attack in one of the terminals.
The story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri was the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s film The Terminal, starring Tom Hanks.
He lived at Paris Airport from 1988 to 2006, mainly because he was in a legally unclear situation and had no papers. He later reportedly decided to live at the airport of his own accord.
For years, Nasseri slept on a red plastic bench and befriended airport workers who allowed him to shower on staff premises.
An aid network has formed at the airport, which provides him with food, medical care, books and a radio. He spent his time writing in his journal, reading magazines, and observing travelers.
Nicknamed Lord Alfred, the Iranian became something of a celebrity among Charles de Gaulle’s regulars.
“One day I will leave the airport,” he said in a 1999 interview, in which he looked frail, with balding hair and sunken eyes. “But I’m still waiting for a passport or transit visa.”
No papers or documents
Nasseri was born in Solemain, a part of Iran under British jurisdiction, in 1945 to an Iranian father and British mother. He left the country in 1974 to study in England, but was arrested during a protest against Shah Reza Pahlavi’s government and expelled from the country without his passport.
He applied for political asylum in several European countries and crossed Germany and the Netherlands to find his mother. However, Nasseri was expelled from several countries because he did not have the correct papers.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Belgium issued him a refugee card, but he said he lost the papers when his suitcase was stolen in a Paris train station.
The French police arrested him but could not deport him to any country because he had no official documents. So in 1998 he came to Paris International Airport and stayed there.
New bureaucratic hurdles and increasingly strict European immigration regulations have led him to a legal “no man’s land” for years. In 1999, when he finally received his new documents guaranteeing his stay in France, he expressed surprise and concern at leaving the airport.
back to the airport
“I’m not sure what I want to do, whether I want to stay here or leave,” he said at the time. “I have my papers, I can stay here. I think I should consider all options carefully before making a decision.”
However, Nasseri stayed at the airport. His lawyer said he was afraid to leave the place where he stayed until 2006, when he was hospitalized. After that, he lived in a Paris animal shelter.
People he befriended at the airport reported that years of living in a windowless room affected his mental state. An airline employee compared him to a prisoner who cannot live in the outside world.
In addition to 2004’s The Terminal, his life also inspired the French film Lost in Transit and an opera called Flight.
Spielberg’s work earned him some money, but Nasseri returned to live at the airport weeks before his death, according to a local official. He died of natural causes in Terminal 2F. A few thousand euros were found.
rc(AP, AFP)