Comment The 77-year-old Iranian refugee whose ordeal inspired the 2004 film “The Terminal” died Saturday inside Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, where he had previously lived for 18 years. Mehran Karimi Nasseri died around noon local time of a heart attack, a spokesman for Paris airport authorities said Sunday. “He was an iconic, charismatic character. There is a lot of emotion at the airport after his death.” Nasseri was beloved by airport staff, who mourned his death this weekend, the spokesman said. Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film, set at New York’s JFK International Airport, starred Tom Hanks as an Eastern European man who gets stuck in the transit zone after a coup in his fictional homeland upends his legal status. In the end, the protagonist leaves the airport, briefly fulfills his father’s mission, and then heads home. ‘Terminal’: Cleared for take-off But Nasseri’s decades-long immigration struggles were far more complicated. Over the years, he gave some conflicting details of his life, but ultimately there was no end to Hollywood. Nasseri either went into exile or fled the political turmoil in Iran in the 1970s and settled in Belgium for many years. He wanted to find his British mother and tried to travel elsewhere in Europe, only to be repeatedly deported from several countries for not having the required immigration documents, according to the BBC. In 1988, French authorities stopped him at Paris airport as he tried to pass without identity documents, which he said had been stolen. The authorities held him for several days at a standstill in a transit zone and then released him at one of Charles de Gaulle’s terminals. Caught in an immigration trap, he soon created his own makeshift home at the airport and lived for many years in Terminal 1. They dream of reaching America. Their forced service in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard shuts them out. It became the subject of news and at least two movies. His airport home became a media sensation after the release of “The Terminal” in 2004. DreamWorks reportedly paid him several hundred thousand dollars for the rights to his story. By 1999, France offered him a residence permit. But he continued to live inside the airport until 2006. After leaving the airport, he seemed to have difficulty adjusting to life outside. “The reality is that he had psychological problems,” the airport spokesman said. “He was a homeless man who was cared for by the airport community and the doctors.” The spokesman said Nasseri returned to the airport’s Terminal 2F in mid-September after leaving a care home where he had been staying. “Many people went to great lengths to treat him and get him into a care home tailored to his needs,” the spokesman said. Other refugees have found themselves in similar situations, though none for as long. In 2018, a Syrian man lived in a Malaysian airport for seven months before being picked up by Canada. He was arrested without a legal place to stay while unable to return home to his war-torn country.
