MAN WHO INSPIRED “THE TERMINAL” MOVIE DIES IN AIRPORT

An Iranian man who lived for 18 years in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport and whose saga inspired the Steven Spielberg film “The Terminal” died Saturday in the airport that he long called home. Mehran Karimi Nasseri died after a heart attack in the airport’s Terminal 2F around midday. An Iranian by nationality, he left Iran to study in England in 1974. When he returned, he was imprisoned for protesting against the shah and expelled without a passport. He said his briefcase containing a refugee certificate was stolen in a Paris train station. French police later arrested him, but couldn’t deport him anywhere because he had no official documents. He ended up at Charles de Gaulle in August 1988 and lived in the airport’s Terminal 1 from 1988 until 2006, first in legal limbo because he lacked residency papers and later just because he wanted to. Year in and year out, he slept on a red plastic bench, making friends with airport workers, showering in staff facilities, writing in his diary, reading magazines and watching passing travelers. He had trouble living outside the airport, and in the weeks before his death, Nasseri had been again living at Charles de Gaulle terminal.
* Tom Hanks did it funnier.
* So … he died doing something he loved?
* His life was going nowhere. Literally. That’s what his life was.
* He must have moved on to a higher plane.
* Living 20 years inside an airport. Surely, you can’t be serious.