Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian refugee who lived for 18 years in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and whose intriguing tale inspired the Steven Spielberg 2004 film “The Terminal,” died on Saturday in the same airport where he spent so much of his life.
Mr. Nasseri, who was in his late 70s, died of a heart attack in Terminal 2F at about noon, a representative for the airport said in a statement. His exact age was not immediately known.
Mr. Nasseri’s attachment to the airport persisted until his final days. He had been staying at a nursing home this year, but returned to the airport in mid-September “to live as a homeless person in the public space of the airport,” the representative said.
With his trimmed mustache and soft voice, Mr. Nasseri became a peculiar fixture in Terminal 1 of the bustling airport as he hauled piles of his belongings, stacked neatly on a luggage cart. He resided in the airport from 1988 to 2006, initially because of legal hurdles to proving his refugee status, and later by choice.
He lived between a pizzeria and an electronics store, planting himself on a red plastic bench that he made his home. On a coffee table, he had a hand mirror; an electric shaver, which he used every morning; and a collection of press clippings that told of his status as an odd figure in France.
His days were punctuated by the rhythm of flights, and by the presence of travelers, whose numbers swelled in the morning and dwindled at night, leaving him mostly alone to sleep on his preferred curved bench. Airport employees would routinely give him their meal coupons, and flight attendants would give him toiletries left over by first-class passengers.
The New York Times Magazine noted in a 2003 profile of Mr. Nasseri that he seemed “both settled — and ready to go.”
“I realize I am famous,” Mr. Nasseri said in that article. “I wasn’t interesting until I came here.”
His story became a bizarre tale in immigration history, and some details about his background proved difficult to pin down because of his changing claims about his origins. (In the same article, he denied that he was Iranian and deflected questions about his childhood in Tehran.)
Airport officials said they had confirmed that Mr. Nasseri was born in Iran, in the town of Masjid-i-Sulaiman, in 1945.
Early on, he had said he was expelled from his homeland for antigovernment activity in 1977 because, as a student in England, he protested against the government of Shah Mohammed Reza…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at NYT > Travel…