If you’ve flown on an airplane at any point in your life, you’ve experienced the unpleasant feeling of waiting in an airport. Even if all the stars are in alignment and your flight’s on time, there’s still the inevitable queuing up at the check-in counter, standing in the airport security line, and waiting to board at the gate. And even something as simple as a change in the weather— some rainstorm clear on the other side of the country— had the potential to disrupt your well-planned itinerary.
Delays come in all shapes and sizes, and they’ve given me cause to nap in more airports than I care to remember. On one occasion, for reasons I’m still trying to understand, a one-day labor strike somewhere in Germany disrupted my unrelated transit travel through France. I ended up sleeping on the cold, carpeted floor of the Charles de Gaulle airport, and leaving a full twenty-four hours later than intended.
But for as vividly as I recall that one night of discomfort in Terminal One, my experience pales in comparison to the true story of Merhan Karimi Nasseri.
Merhan’s story is a real-life soap opera. He was born in Iran in 1945. At the age of twenty, when his father died, the woman he knew as his mother confessed that Merhan was actually the product of his father’s affair with a Scottish nurse. After spending a few formative years studying in the United Kingdom, Merhan returned to Iran… where he quickly landed on the bad side of the Shah for taking part in anti-regime protests.
At this point, Merhan’s origin story seems to get a little murky. The man himself claimed that after after a prolonged period of interrogation and torture, the government of Iran issued him a temporary passport and expelled him, effectively rendering him a stateless person. He decided to emigrate to the UK, but was robbed of his briefcase and passport while transiting through Paris. The UK naturally refused to admit Merhan without any documentation, and turned him back around on a plane bound for France. There, he served six months in jail for being an illegal immigrant… and on his release, was left with absolutely nowhere to go.
A number of immigration experts have also looked into Merhan’s case, however, and they’ve found no evidence to support his claim of expulsion from Iran. It’s also just as likely that Merhan could’ve shipped his travel and immigration documents to the UK, in a decision which probably made sense to him at the time.
But regardless of how he got there, in 1988, Merhan found himself stuck at Terminal One of Charles de Gaulle Airport. Unable to travel anywhere else, and fearing arrest if he attempted to leave the building, he eventually decided to settle in and establish residence in the airport. French immigration courts ruled that because Merhan had entered the country legally, he could not be expelled back to a country that would not take him; on the other hand, the courts also found that they did not have any legal authority to admit him into France.
And it was in this fashion that Merhan spent the next 18 years of his life living in Terminal One.
While this season of Merhan’s life might sound like an absurd bureaucratic nightmare, it’s also a testament to the man’s obstinacy. At different points in his sabbatical, Merhan was offered residency by both France and Belgium. Those deals repeatedly fell through, however, when he refused to sign legal paperwork which showed his nationality as Iranian instead of British, or which didn’t use his preferred name of “Sir Alfred” Merhan. Merhan’s stubbornness frustrated his lawyers to no end, although over the years, his extended family came to accept that he was living the life he wanted.
During his extended layover, Merhan survived by accepting donations of food from airport employees. He spent his days in a quiet seat by the windows, passing the time by reading newspapers, writing in his diary, and studying economics. Eventually, as his story gained international attention, Merhan even began to receive fan mail from across the globe.
By 2004, after spending more than a decade of his life in this fashion, Merhan had appeared in a number of documentary films, and decided to publish his memoirs in “The Terminal Man”. The book achieved a modest amount of success for a first-time author, no doubt due to his international notoriety as the world’s most famous homeless man. Readers with time to kill during their layover were able to pick up his memoirs at an airport bookstore, then dash over to Terminal One to have their copy signed by the author.
That year marked the peak of Merhan’s fame, as director Steven Spielberg paid $250,000 for the movie rights to his life story. And even though Tom Hanks’ performance in “The Terminal” was a far cry from the true story, the movie was a blockbuster success.
Although Merhan’s memoirs ended with him still… waiting, in 2006, a series of urgent medical issues forced him to finally leave the airport. And despite the stubborn French bureaucracy, it seems that more intelligent minds eventually prevailed. French courts officially granted Merhan permission to enter the country in 2008, and he’s been living in a shelter in Paris ever since.
And even though his level of international fame might have fallen off since his legal battles came to a close, Merhan seems quite content to pass his days reading newspapers and writing letters.
And as his family put it, “Sir Alfred” seems to be happy living the life he wants.
POSTSCRIPT: I normally write these blog posts in advance, so in November 2022, I was deeply saddened to hear of “Sir Alfred’s” passing. Apparently, this gutsy homeless man had returned to Charles de Gaulle airport at some point, taking up residency in his old stomping grounds once again.
I hope this legend of a man was happy to spend the last few months of his life on his terms– just like he’d always done.