Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the exiled Iranian who lived for 18 years at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, died on November 13, 2022.
According to a representative of Paris airport authorities, Nasseri, 76, died after a heart attack in the airport’s Terminal 2F.
Nasseri was the inspiration behind American director and producer Steven Spielberg’s hit film The Terminal, starring Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Who was Mehran Karimi Nasseri?
Mehran Karimi Nasseri was born in 1945 to an Iranian father and a British mother in Soleiman, Iran, which was then ruled by the British. In 1974, he left Iran to attend university in England.
He said that upon his return to Iran he was deported without a passport and imprisoned for participating in protests against the government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
After being exiled from his country, he sought political refuge in several European nations, but was always denied.
He eventually received refugee certifications from the United Nations refugee organization in Belgium. However, he claimed that his briefcase, where he kept his refugee certificates, was lost at a Paris train station.
Without proper documentation, he was refused entry to the UK and sent back to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris while traveling from there.
With nowhere to go, Nasseri began living in Terminal 1 of Paris Charles de Gaulle airport in 1988.
In the 1990s, the French government insisted that he was an illegal immigrant on French lands, but they could not deport him because no nation would accept him.
Since then, Nasseri made Paris airport his home.
In 1999 he was given permission to leave the airport and travel anywhere in Europe he wanted.
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He was apparently unwilling to leave and decided to stay at the airport after declaring himself stateless.
He showered in the staff bathroom and slept on a red plastic seat between boxes of newspapers and magazines. She wrote in his diary, read publications, researched economics, and watched people passing by as she studied them.
He adopted the alias Sir Alfred, given to him by airport staff.
People who knew Nasseri during his time living at the airport stated that the years he spent at the airport had a negative impact on his mental health. She was admitted to the hospital in 2006 and assigned to a shelter in Paris.
However, Nasseri returned to live at Charles de Gaulle just a few weeks before he died.
Nasseri’s strange circumstances became a source of inspiration for many films and documentaries.
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According to the New York Times, modern Hollywood film pioneer Steven Spielberg bought the rights to his life for more than $250,000.
Spielberg’s blockbuster The Terminal, starring Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones, was loosely based on Nasseri’s life after his exile and residence at the Paris airport.
Other film pieces inspired by Nasseri’s life include that of French filmmaker Philippe Lioret, Lost in transitopera by British composer Jonathan Dove, Flightdocumentary by Hamid Rahmanian and Melissa Hibbard, Charles de Gaulle Sir Alfred AirportMockumentary by Glen Luchford and Paul Berczeller, Here to where, and several others.
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Nasseri wrote an autobiography titled The Terminal Man, which was published in 2004. Although Mehran Karimi Nasseri had died, the story of his life and tragedy will live on through his autobiography and the film pieces inspired by him.
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Source: ptivs2.edu.vn