Steven Spielberg created a monument to him during his lifetime with the film “Terminal”: The Iranian refugee Mehran Karimi Nasseri lived for years at Charles de Gaulle Airport. At first he was not allowed to leave the transit area, eventually he returned voluntarily and died there.
The Iranian refugee who lived for 18 years at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and who inspired Steven Spielberg’s film “Terminal” is dead. Mehran Karimi Nasseri died of natural causes in Terminal 2F of the airport, an airport spokesman confirmed. In mid-September, Nasseri, who called himself Sir Alfred, moved back into the airport after previously living in the home and most recently in the hotel. He was 76 years old.
During a stopover in 1988, the Iranian lost his papers in the transit area. He could no longer prove his refugee status and was now not allowed to travel further or leave the airport. He then set himself up in Terminal 1. For years he tried in vain to get admission in several European countries. In 1999 he got a visa for France, but stayed in his alcove under an airport escalator, where he had made himself at home.
It was not until 2006 that he left the airport for a hospital stay and then lived in a home. Nasseri’s story inspired Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film Terminal, starring Tom Hanks. With the money he got for the film, Nasseri moved to a hotel.
For a few weeks, however, he had been living in the airport again and always sat in the same place with his belongings in a trolley, airport employees reported to the newspaper “Le Parisien”. Recently he has hardly spoken and stared into emptiness. After the death of the “terminal man,” as he called himself in an autobiographical novel, the airport covered his seat with a white sheet.