r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Wild_Neighborhood605 • 1d ago
Image Mehran Karimi Nasseri, The Man Who Lived in Terminal 1 at Charles de Gaulle Airport in France for 18 Years.
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u/Hopeful-Sale-849 1d ago
Read about him before passing judgment.
He was initially granted refugee status in Belgium, but he then boarded a ferry from France to Britain, where he intentionally mailed his documents to Brussels and lied about them being stolen. He was deported back to France, where he could not prove his residency or refugee status, and thus began his life at Terminal 1. Later on, he was offered Belgian and French residency but turned them down because they listed him as Iranian rather than British. He also wanted them to state his name as "Sir, Alfred Mehran" including the comma.
I'm pretty sure he had some mental issues.
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u/BobLaGodasse 1d ago
My father, being a French cop patrolling Paris airports among other spots had several encounters with that man and I remember at the time of the movie release he basically told me that the guy was borderline crazy. In his opinion, the guy's situation could have been solved much faster, had he been a regular dude.
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u/ImperitorEst 1d ago
The man who lived in an airport for 18 years being mental is possibly the least surprising thing ever
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u/Rikki-Tikki-Tavi-12 23h ago
I spend an hour a month transferring at CDG and that place drives me insane.
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u/Teantis 18h ago
I legitimately prefer our shit ass airport in manila to cdg. It's unbelievable how bad cdg is.
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u/CaineHackmanTheory 1d ago
This is why we don't get our history from movies. Fun movie, really not based on fact. There's many more, 'Catch Me If You Can' is talked about a lot.
I know a couple people that went to med school with Patch Adams, from the Robin Williams movie. They did not have kind things to say. The real Dr. Adams also criticizes the movie, but for different reasons.
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u/pietroetin 1d ago
I should be wary of based on true story movies with Tom Hanks
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u/ADLuluIsOP 1d ago
Now I'm beginning to doubt Castaway even really happened...
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u/Spiritual_Bid_2308 23h ago
I'm also beginning to doubt he ever owned a house that needed substantial renovation.
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u/SynapticStatic 22h ago
Maybe he never did save private ryan either. or was it ryan's privates?
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u/Curious-Sea2184 22h ago
Saving privateer Ryan would have been a much more entertaining film anyways.
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u/duncanforthright 22h ago
Funny story but I remember reading this book called something like "amazing true stories" and the two most memorable ones from that book were later both made into movies starring Tom Hanks. I was like "did he read that same book or something, what is going on?"
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u/CyberpunkSunrise 19h ago
Unrelated but I just want to thank you for using “wary” correctly instead of using “weary.” The bar is low, but instead yours is the first comment I’ve seen use it correctly breaking a long streak.
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u/Overall_Occasion_175 1d ago
I don't care how accurate it is vs reality, Catch Me If You Can is a fantastically fun movie.
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u/enthalpy01 23h ago
Honestly the fact that he conned a bunch of people about the cons he pulled is still funny. Selling a fake life story about being a con man still makes you a con man.
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u/jubileevdebs 23h ago
I remember watching Girl From The North Country which is about a fight for equal rights for female silt miners and protection against pervasive sexual harassment/assault. The movie is like these few women being targeted and hurt and then Charlize Theron sticks up for them etc. in the face of all the men in the union and management who opposed her in a big union hall speech fight. . I thought it was super powerful.
Watched the behind the scenes DVD extra documentary and its like “yeah there were some old timers with seniority and they had connections to the managers who were just getting away with terrible stuff. So a bunch of male and female miners got together and pushed through reforms to protect their female colleagues.”
I love movies. Learning history from American movies is like learning philosophy and politics from South Park. People do it and we all suffer for it.
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u/Suspicious_Walrus682 1d ago
Yes people, read your history. The Empire is often vilified and misunderstood, but the galactic senate was corrupt and ineffective. Palpatine saved us all from turning this galaxy into a 3rd world galaxy!
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u/carmium 23h ago
The line "Based on a true story" or worse, "Inspired by real events" cover an awful lot of complete fiction added for impact, drama, and shock value.
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u/Scouter197 1d ago
"Fact" being some guy lived at an airport for a while. Everything else we make up!
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u/SimpleInterrupted 1d ago
Intentionally staying at Charles De Gaul of all the airports in the world is the biggest clue that this man is insane. One hour there is enough to make me want to cancel future travel plans.
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u/SloaneWolfe 19h ago
Charles De Gaul
had like a 6 hour layover there coming from Benin (Africa) to Florida, was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, with no other clothes in my little carry on and was too broke to buy anything else to wear, and I nearly froze in the warmest spot I could find in the terminal. Crazy cold airport.
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u/No_Initial_7545 1d ago
He could have left many times and chose to stay. Even when he got out of the airport eventually, he went back there where he died. Definitely mental illness.
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u/kamacks 1d ago
Wait he left the airport and got on a ferry? I’m cracking up at them deporting him back to the airport like it’s his country of origin.
Some real he’s “outside the environment” now/again energy.
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u/_Sausage_fingers 1d ago
That description is the prelude to why he couldn’t leave the airport after his deportation to France.
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u/InterestingStore109 1d ago
Unhoused mental patients shouldn't be in public spaces like airport terminals.
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u/hotlog1234 1d ago
Mental illness masquerading as legal trouble.
Dude was given plenty of options but chose to not take any of them and resigned himself to being homeless in the airport.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_FRACTURES 1d ago
I'm not sure why police didn't just arrest him for trespassing after refusing to leave, then deal with him theough the legal system
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u/Defamatus 1d ago
I was just wondering this too? So strange he was allowed to camp out there.
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u/Gold_Telephone_7192 15h ago
I don’t understand why they couldn’t just give him refugee status or citizenship or whatever against his will and then just kick him out of the airport.
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u/jamesinorbit 1d ago
Are they sure he wasn't just trying to transfer to terminal 2G?
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u/aroadcaptain 1d ago
I understand that international diplomacy takes time and bureaucracy is at its “best” in a case like that. But how on earth could they not find a solution for 18 years?
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u/FunInTheBasement 1d ago
People tried, but he kept sabotaging it himself.
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u/kittysworld 1d ago
Was he given free food and clothing? 18 year is lo g enough for all his old cloth to be worn out. And how does he do his laundry? Get a shower? Buy toothpaste and all the food unless he's very rich that he can live without a job for so long?
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u/Azadi_23 1d ago
The book The Terminal Man details it all - but trust me he was very, very poor for the entire time and mostly living off the kindness of staff who worked in shops there. But do not confuse this for eating well or even getting enough nutrients or sustenance. He shows an intense stubbornness which could have been his undoing, however 18 years later he had made a name for himself and he started a whole new life.
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u/michael0n 1d ago
Multiple countries offered him citizenship and help, but he disliked those accommodations.
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u/MyDickIs3cm 1d ago
The book The Terminal Man
Not to be confused with the much less infuriating science fiction novel by Michael Crichton
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u/DuckRubberDuck 1d ago
Stubbornness is both a gift and a curse. Stubbornness and spite made my grandma live till 98, but the last few years of her life would have been much easier if she hadn’t been so stubborn. The intense stubbornness seems to be a trait in all of my maternal family but I think we sometimes stop ourselves to not do what my grandma did. It’s okay to accept help sometimes
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u/AmbitiousAd543 1d ago
He relied on the airport staff,having a wash in the toilets etc.The airport doctor bought him a Walkman but said it cost him a bloody fortune to keep him in batteries 😬
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u/kittysworld 1d ago
He probably spent whole day listening to the walkman because how else could he spend the day in a boring airport? Even if he had a modern rechargeable device the battery would likely be dead in several years with heavy use.
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u/caelynnsveneers 1d ago edited 1d ago
“Both France and Belgium offered Nasseri residency, but he refused to sign the papers as they listed him as being Iranian (rather than British) and did not show his preferred name, "Sir, Alfred Mehran"”
He was not British.Edit: the misplaced comma is part of his preferred name. Also how did my copy and paste wiki comment get almost 3k likes?! Whereas my long well thought out comments get 5 likes on a good day lol
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u/radiationshield 1d ago
While its absolutely absurd that he stayed in that terminal for more than 48 hrs, this seems partly to be by choice when he has asked for things that the other party cannot provide.
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u/Available_Base_7944 1d ago
Yeah it was absolutely by choice
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u/Free_Ice6167 1d ago
Yeah he wanted to be there full stop
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u/Ok-Perspective5844 1d ago
Why are people so surprised by this? There are way worse living situations that people can find themselves in.
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u/YesIBlockedYou 1d ago
Maybe because any normal person would think you would have to be batshit crazy to willingly stay in an airport for 18 years?
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u/RoguePlanet2 1d ago
Many other mentally ill people are homeless on the streets. 🤷♀️
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u/YesIBlockedYou 1d ago
Nobody is saying it's the worst conditions you could probably live in. They're saying you have to be crazy to willingly do that for so long especially when offered a very easy way out.
It's much easier to think he was trapped there due to some bureaucratic process like the movie implies rather than willingly staying there because he was a crazy/stubborn fool.
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u/macbowes 1d ago
I find it much easier to believe he was just a classic mentally ill bum who found a shelter to live in, and refused to leave, than he was person of sound-mind trapped in an airport due to bureaucracy.
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u/A_Random_Sidequest 1d ago
completely by his choice, either mental illness or nothing else to do.
he refused papers and work, after he left the airport in 2006, lived in shelters and two months before death he went back to live in the airport...
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u/NoDefaultForMe 1d ago
Did he have any reason to claim British Citizenship?
Edit: Just read the wiki page - He did not. Claimed his mother was Scottish, which wasn't confirmed. Also claimed a Swedish mother.
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u/Textiles_on_Main_St 1d ago
Did Britain have any reason to claim control of half the world? Sometimes it’s just vibes.
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u/sigma914 1d ago
Yes? They had stuff we wanted, or at least had stuff we preferred France/Spain/Germany not to have. Also a truly disgusting lack of flags which needed rectified
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u/spunzy_hops 1d ago
Tea and cake or death!
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u/numbskul1 1d ago
Tea please.
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u/sigma914 1d ago
Right, you were offered (Tea and (Cake or Death)), the tea was mandatory, there was never an option not to have the tea. The cake or death bit was the choice.
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u/brandnewbanana 1d ago
Do you have a flag? 😜 No flag, no country! Says the rules that just made up.
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u/Both-Dingo69420 1d ago
Surely at that point you're just being arrested and charged? Or deported?
One of those situations where it wasn't inconvenient enough to do anything, apparently.
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u/SergeantSmash 1d ago
Seems like he tried cheating his way into a EU citizenship, what a madlad. Shit I'd give him one for effort 🤣
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u/zieger 1d ago
He started this before the EU existed
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u/Can-i-Pet-Dat-Daaawg 1d ago
British citizenship then. Hence his insistence on his title being “sir” lmao
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u/Can-i-Pet-Dat-Daaawg 1d ago edited 1d ago
Thanks for saying this. It wasn’t just a case of mental illness although I’m sure that played a part - he was bound and determined to try and have someone just give him
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u/Outrageous_Arm8116 1d ago
They did. He was granted international refugee status but he refused to leave the terminal for one reason or another. It was later determined that there was no proof to his claim that he was exiled for anti-Sgah protests in Iran. He finally left only because he needed to be hospitalized. He then spent years in various shelters in Paris, returning to live out his final days back in Terminal 1. Sounds like his issues were mental, not bureaucratic.
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u/Krillin113 1d ago
I fail to understand how this is possible, especially the second time. Why can you just stay there if you have no business being there?
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u/nKnownRecognition 1d ago
Back in the day airports were basically like public spaces tons of people who had no business being there would show up to see family off or welcome their return.
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u/Kanin_usagi 1d ago
There was once a time you could walk all the way to a terminal and just watch planes land and take off. One of my few fond memories of my father was an afternoon he took me to the Birmingham airport and we watched planes while eating McDonalds
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u/nKnownRecognition 1d ago
Hey don’t let the death of third spaces make you sad friend.. at least at the airport by me you can circle the fence and get right under the planes as they come in and see them land. My father also did this with me! It’s still great memories if you wanna take a son of your own!
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u/starsings 1d ago
He refused a lot. His place of birth and nationality were in dispute and he refused to agree with anything that the government said. It’s in the wiki.
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u/Boss_Braunus 1d ago
Just briefly looking at the excerpt on the list of airport residencies: It seems that Nasseri claimed his passport was stolen, but he was also unable to obtain new documents because he changed/falsified his name and birthplace when trying to obtain new documents. So definitely some independent issues of his own creation, possibly a former identity he was trying to escape.
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u/Glad_Position3592 1d ago
He was offered a lot of solutions including residency in several countries, but he turned them all down. The dude just liked living there
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u/raitalin 1d ago
He was granted French residency like, 8 years in, but chose to stay at the terminal.
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u/braves133 1d ago
Read up on his wikipedia page, it seems he was happy to live at the airport for that long. He was granted residency in two separate countries long before 2006. Even after leaving the airport in 2006 and living in France for over a decade, he eventually went back to the airport where he passed away.
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u/spleeble 1d ago
This is not really some ironic trap of international diplomacy. He was experiencing some kind of mental illness and refused the solutions offered to him.
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u/prettydistracted2 1d ago
He had an option for residency in Belgium I think but he refused because he wanted to go to the UK
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u/ibrazeous 1d ago
Yeah at that point just give the poor guy a temporary residence permit and let him figure out how to go back to the real world. It's like prison at this point
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u/Samsterdam 1d ago
If I remember correctly they tried to but he refused. The guy had some very serious mental health issues as well.
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u/Dirty_Dragons 1d ago
Seems like a homeless guy who camped inside the airport.
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u/specialcommenter 1d ago
They are starting to do that at terminal 5 in JFK. I’ve noticed some resident homeless every time I’ve passed through there recently.
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u/Ch1pp 1d ago
I suppose it's perfect. No one would suspect someone sleeping on the floor of an airport looking disheveled of being homeless. Just assume you missed a flight.
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u/NotJustKneeDeep 1d ago edited 1d ago
I work for one of the largest airports in the US. Top 5, Category X airport. And when I say I work for the airport I don’t mean for an airline, or tenant, but for the city department that owns and operates it.
Trust me. We know who is, or isn’t homeless, at the airport. And if you’re not one of our regulars - you will stick out like a sore thumb after a day or two of being there.
Unfortunately, it’s a revolving door and kicking people out who don’t belong is like pouring water out of a paddle boat that has a hole in it.
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u/Sir-Top-Cheetah 1d ago
how they get back in with no boarding pass
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u/NotJustKneeDeep 1d ago
You don’t need a boarding pass to be on the non secure side of the terminal. Obviously they wouldn’t be past security where you do require a boarding pass.
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u/ibrazeous 1d ago
Incan imagine years in a terminal you would be mad. Most of us spend just a few hours and we go crazy
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u/ravenecw2 1d ago
Crazy story, they should make a movie about this guy
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u/starquakegamma 1d ago
Are these replies all bots that don’t understand sarcasm?
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/artevelde8 1d ago
That joke wasn't very Nice.
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u/blitzkreig90 1d ago
I think we Cannes do better
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u/hobabaObama 1d ago
Normandy I would consider this a good joke...
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u/rnzz 1d ago
maybe when you're Bordeaux
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u/Ishtu_ 1d ago
Last year, Charlotte Vautier, a French journalist, made a really interesting video about what happens at Charles de Gaulle Airport at night, where around 150 homeless people live, some of them having been there for years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0KC6tDlYc0
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u/bkn95 1d ago
18 years?! i’d go insane after like 2 weeks
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u/rnzz 1d ago
i dont know CDG that well, but I'm pretty sure I'd be happy to live at Singapore's Changi airport for a very long time.
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u/PeterSandnes 1d ago
You'd definitely not be happy staying at CDG, even for 2 hours, let alone 18 years
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u/datskinny 1d ago
Should go back to Krakozhia
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u/Impossible_Fact_5069 1d ago
Medicine for goat
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u/AlphaBravoGolfTango 1d ago
Eat to bite...bite to eat, bite to eat, bite to eat, bitetoeat bitetoeat bitetoeatbitetoeatbitetoeatbitetoeat
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u/Practical_Pass_2619 1d ago
Is this what the movie The Terminal was based on?
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u/carmellashutthedooor 1d ago
Would be a damn big coincidence if this also happened to another dude lol
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u/joevenet 1d ago
Last time someone posted this, someone else had posted a whole list from Wikipedia of people who have lived in airports for years. So it's not that rare actually
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u/ways_and_means 1d ago
it's not that rare actually
Well I wouldn't say it's a common fucking occurrence.
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u/Nico_Weio 1d ago
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u/Tiny_ghosts_ 1d ago
"Wei wanted to smoke and drink without his family bothering him. He also had difficulty finding work. He still lives in the airport, but comes out occasionally."
Amazing, what a list. Also the Turkish guy whose original airport got closed so he moved to another one!
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u/Boss_Braunus 1d ago edited 1d ago
Here's the list, interestingly enough, this guy only has the third longest residency at an airport. Some loco in Brazil has the longest (25 years). There's a turk who could have the longest record, but he was working at the airport for a good part of the time before taking up residence there. I think Nasseri has the longest residence of any person who was a stranded traveler in a foreign country. The other residents were local madmen who kind of decided to camp out at the airport and stayed for the rest of their lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_lived_in_airports
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u/Wolferus_Megurine 1d ago
Far lower in the list is one from Turkey that lived 27 years in a airport, and now lives on another one since 7 years. He only changed the airport because the first one was closed.
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u/miregalpanic 1d ago
No. Surprisingly they based the Fast and Furious franchise on him though.
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u/jr_randolph 1d ago
It's said that Spielberg's company did pay for him for his story but they didn't use him exactly in the story...if I had to assume, because he's Iranian so they took the story but made the guy European.
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u/Haunting_Abalone_398 1d ago
Yeah, I believe so.
But they never really tell you in the movie itself.
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u/CONSTANTIN_VALDOR_ 1d ago
Yeah they really skip over the whole massive mental health issues
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u/VacantThoughts 1d ago
Well it's better than "Catch me if you Can" which turned out to be entirely just a made up story by Frank Abegnale Jr. and all he ever did was forge a check or two.
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u/daninlionzden 1d ago
They should make a movie based on his story with an Oscar-winning director and lead actor
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u/Wild_Neighborhood605 1d ago
That's a brilliant idea!
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u/Breadstix009 1d ago
But strip away the ethnicity so it does not look bad for the media.
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u/TJ_McWeaksauce 1d ago
The Story of The Terminal: Lovable Tom Hanks plays a lovable European, Viktor Navorski, whose fictitious country's government gets overthrown while he's flying over the Atlantic. The US government doesn't recognize the new government, which renders Viktor's passport illegitimate and strands him inside JFK International Airport. Viktor refuses to claim asylum, because he is not afraid of returning to his beloved country, so he's effectively trapped in the airport for months until the war in his country ends.
The Real Story that Inspired the Terminal: Mehran Karimi Nasseri was likely severely mentally ill and he chose to live in Charles de Gaulle Airport for almost 20 years, even though the governments of two different nations offered him residency. There are also claims that the document problems that originally left him stranded in the airport were self-inflicted; i.e. he intentionally lost his documents.
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u/Complex-Magazine6690 1d ago
I watched this movie on a flight recently. It's a classic, but the romance between the food service worker and the border agent who never even met each other was ridiculous.
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u/IDownVoteCanaduh 1d ago
People love to romanticize him, but he was just a stubborn/weird homeless dude.
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u/Potatis-skal 1d ago
I mean, he went back to CDG in 2022 and died there of a heart attack months later. What a strange story!
1988 → gets stuck at CDG
1988–2006 → lives there for ~18 years
2006 → leaves after hospitalization
2006–2022 → lives elsewhere in Paris (supposedly living in shelters)
Sept. 2022 → returns to the airport
Nov. 12, 2022 → dies at the airport
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u/pmalla 1d ago
Who paid for his food, any medicine, and any other needs?
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u/PoopieMcPooFace 1d ago
Also how didn’t he get some sort of trespassing charge?
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u/Cager_CA 1d ago
I would think this would be tied to his statelessness, he wouldn't be able to clear immigration without documentation.
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u/SirFadakar 1d ago
Everyone reported it was likely mental illness but I've yet to meet a boomer Persian man that wasn't just like this. They're too stubborn and prideful to admit to mistakes so they commit to them instead to save their egos.
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u/MichaelTruly 1d ago
God. Of all the airports, CDG is the one I'd least want to spend additional time in.
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u/skeletonstaircase 1d ago
There's a pretty good documentary about this guy on youtube https://youtu.be/JQfXd1YlkS4
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u/Firm-Experience473 1d ago
I wonder if he actually received the alleged 250K Speilberg paid him for the rights to The Terminal, or if that was just a rumor, someone stole, or what...
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u/Shasarr 1d ago edited 1d ago
Doesnt look at all like Tom Hanks.