The Real “The Terminal” Man Passes Away in Charles de Gaulle Airport

Back in the noughties when there was a slew of romantic comedies from Hollywood and Tom Hanks the lead in many of them, there was The Terminal. The Stephen Spielberg directed movie, which revolved around Hanks’ character being stranded in New York’s JFK airport following a coup at his fictional home country, was inspired by a case of truth is stranger than fiction.

Mehran Karimi Nasseri was an Iranian refugee who lived in the Charles de Gaulle Airport for 18 years. After being exiled from his home country for antigovernment activities, he sought refuge in Europe. Nasseri was en route to London (to find his Scottish mother, he claimed) via Paris when he said that his papers had been stolen at a train station. Nonetheless, the authorities at the Paris airport let him fly to Heathrow, where he was refused entry and was forced to return from whence he came.

With no papers to allow him to leave the airport nor a country that would accept him, Nasseri resided in the airport since 1988. Over the years, it seems like it was his choice to reside in the airport, refusing the eventual offer in 1999 to reside (somewhere else) in France.

Nasseri became something of a celebrity, spending his time in Terminal 1 reading, writing and studying. He became a part of the airport community and was well cared for by the staff, who gave him meal coupons and toiletries, and called him Sir Alfred. He slept on a red bench, used the public bathrooms to wash up and kept all his belongings on a luggage cart. His autobiography titled The Terminal Man was published the same year that the movie was released.

Nasseri only left the airport again in 2006, when he had to go to hospital. He then lived in a shelter and later a nursing home but returned to live in the airport just weeks before passing away from a heart attack in Terminal 2F last week. After decades of being considered “homeless”, the airport was to him, it would seem, his real home and country.