Man Who Inspired 'The Terminal' Dies in French Airport He Lived in for Nearly Two Decades

Mehran Karimi Nasseri checks the monitors 12 August 2004 in the terminal one of Paris Charles De Gaulle airport. Known as "Sir Alfred Mehran", Mehran Karimi Nasseri is a 59 year-old Iranian refugee who has been living in Roissy for 16 years, and whose life has therefore inspired American film director Steven Spielberg for the character of the protagonist in the movie "The Terminal".

Photo: Stephane De Sakutin (Getty Images)

The Iranian man who lived in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport for 18 years whose story inspired Steven Speilberg’s The Terminal died on November 12th at the airport, according to the Associated Press.

Authorities say Mehran Karimi Nasseri died due to a heart attack in the French airport’s Terminal 2F. He was treated by police and a medical team, but could not be saved. He was 77 years old.

Nasseri – nicknamed Lord Alfred by the airport staff – lived in the airport’s Terminal 1 from 1988 through 2006. He started out in a sort of legal limbo because he didn’t have residency papers. But, he eventually grew to like his situation and stayed in the airport by choice.

The AP reports that for nearly two decades, he slept on a red plastic bench, showered in staff facilities, wrote in his diary and read magazines, made friends with the staff, and my favorite thing: people watched. As you may have guessed, he became a bit of a local celebrity among passengers and staff alike.

Nasseri was born in 1945 in Soleiman, a part of Iran then under British jurisdiction, to an Iranian father and a British mother. He left Iran to study in England in 1974. When he returned, he said, he was imprisoned for protesting against the shah and expelled without a passport.

He applied for political asylum in several countries in Europe. The UNHCR in Belgium gave him refugee credentials, but he said his briefcase containing the refugee certificate was stolen in a Paris train station.

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He was eventually arrested in France, but since he didn’t have any official documents they couldn’t deport him anywhere. Quite a pickle. In August of 1988 he ended up at de Gaulle, and that’s where Lord Alfred stayed.

Further bureaucratic bungling and increasingly strict European immigration laws kept him in a legal no-man’s land for years.

After years of waiting, Naseri finally received his refugee papers, but elected to not leave the airport anyway. He remained in the terminal until he was hospitalized in 2006. After that he resided in a shelter in Paris.

However, AP reports that in the weeks before his death he ventured back to Charles de Gaulle and began living there once again. From what is reported, it seemed like the place he was most comfortable, so there is some solace to take in that.