For all it was the man who lived in the airport , the one who inspired the plot of the film "The Terminal" by Steven Spielberg starring Tom Hanks . But his was a true story, made up of almost 20 years spent at the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle in Paris.
Now Mehran Karimi Nasseri is gone: he was 78 years old, he was an Iranian refugee, and was found dead in terminal 2F.
Sir Alfred, as he called himself, had become famous in 2004. Journalists from all over the world visited him at the airport to interview him, he had also earned some money enough to be able to afford a hotel room. The money had recently run out and was back at the terminal a few weeks ago.
Born in 1945 in Masjed Soleiman, in the Iranian province of Kuzistan, he settled in Roissy in November 1988 after a long journey that had taken him to London, Berlin and Amsterdam in search of his mother. Each time, the authorities of those countries had expelled the undocumented exile. In 1999 he had finally obtained refugee status in France and a residence permit but - perhaps in a state of confusion - he had refused to sign the file : "I'm not in my name - he explained according to the chronicles of those days - I am no longer what I was. My name is now Sir Alfred Merhan and I'm not Iranian. My father was Swedish and my mother Danish."
(Unioneonline/ss)