![]() ![]() He filled page after page with his spidery black handwriting racing across the unlined paper. Sir Alfred would then begin the activity that took up much of his day: writing his journal. There had been a brief flirtation one year with Burger King, but their French fries machine had broken for a few days and now Sir Alfred thought them too unreliable Lunch would nearly always be a Filet-O-Fish from McDonald’s. Passengers passed his bench, ignoring him, apart from a few who would do a double-take at the amount of hand luggage he seemed to have. ![]() He would then return to his bench and eat breakfast as the airport burst into life around him. Next, he’d buy breakfast from the McDonald’s menu, before visiting the terminal’s newsagent to buy (or be given) a newspaper or three. Sir Alfred was always extremely dignified. Every morning, before the airport became busy, he would leave his bench and go to a bathroom where he would shave and wash to “ensure best presentation of self”. Photograph: Christophe Calais/Corbis via Getty Imagesīeing trapped in an airport terminal meant Sir Alfred’s life lacked any kind of structure, and so he had created one. Mehran Karimi Nasseri's bench was surrounded by several luggage trolleys and many boxes and bags containing his growing hoard of belongings that were becoming a nest around him. I stayed with Sir Alfred for three weeks to learn his life story. “Instead of our book just laying out the facts,” I said, “how about we explore the story of Sir Alfred as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma sitting on a red bench in an airport terminal?” I suggested another approach to my new editor.Īll his airport situation lacked was cameras, a host, a show and an adoring audience And, most mysteriously of all, that his mother had been an English nurse. Many rumours and myths had attached themselves to his extraordinary story over the years. It quickly became clear that the exact truth behind Sir Alfred’s background and lost paperwork was as much of a mystery to him as to the rest of us. The selling point of most autobiographies is that they tell the truth. When they replied, their letter began “Dear Sir, Alfred …” It was on headed notepaper from the British embassy – how could it not be a knighthood, he asked with a grin. How did he come to have a knighthood? With a toothy grin he explained how he had written to the British embassy in Brussels asking for help. Film director Steven Spielberg had bought the movie rights to fictionalise Sir Alfred’s story as the Tom Hanks vehicle The Terminal, but Sir Alfred was keen to tell his real story in the medium he loved best: print. I was introduced to Sir Alfred, who died earlier this month, by Barbara Laugwitz, the German editor who had summoned me from London. The airport was a no man’s land, an endless limbo he could never leave. He couldn’t get on a plane without a passport, and if he left the airport to go into France, he would be arrested for not having ID papers. He had arrived at the airport without proper documentation and was now trapped. Sir Alfred’s full name was Mehran Karimi Nasseri. If we liked each other then we were to co-write his autobiography, to be called The Terminal Man. At the airport, I was to meet Sir Alfred Mehran, a stateless political refugee who had (at that point, in 2004) been living on a bench in the departure lounge of Terminal 1 for 16 years. This is the sort of request that authors live for, but that rarely ever happens in real life. My morning’s writing had been blissfully interrupted by an unexpected request that I catch a Eurostar to Paris and get to Charles de Gaulle airport “by 3pm if possible”. “He’s been living in an airport for nearly 20 years,” said my agent. ![]()
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