A man with luggage sitting in an airport terminal is not an odd sight. However, a man who has been doing this for over 18 years is peculiar. This article is about Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian refugee who was sent to France’s Charles de Gaulle airport on 26 August 1988 after several failed attempts to fly to the UK There until July 2006 hospitalized.
His story is multi-layered, and for years the truth of his origins was obscured even by his own imagination. He claims he was deported from Iran and is on his way to London to find his biological mother. The fact is that he was born into a relatively wealthy social class in Iran, where his father worked for an oil company and his mother was a nurse for the same company.
Nasseri claims his mother told him he was an illegitimate child, so he is on his way to find his biological mother. However, she has denied the claim and there is no evidence he was ever expelled from Iran.
He remained in the airport’s Terminal 1 after being deported for failing to show his passport to British immigration officials. He even enlisted the help of French human rights lawyer Christian Bourget. He has been in limbo due to his inability to enter France legally, but there is no law prohibiting him from remaining at the airport.
Several countries, including Belgium and France, offered him citizenship, but he rejected the offers. At this point, he even had an identity crisis, calling himself Sir Alfred, refusing to speak Iranian, or even denying that he was from Iran.
When DreamWorks Productions acquired the rights to his story, his situation attracted international attention, with people writing to him from all over the world, and airport workers and journalists taking notice of his story. He even inspired several movies. In 2004, he published his autobiography.
His experience is a real-world exploration of what statelessness really means. It makes you think about the reality of someone who is constantly surrounded by people but ultimately alone.
