An Iranian man who lived in Paris’s airport for nearly 20 years, a saga made into the movie “The Terminal” starring Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones, died of a heart attack at the airport he once called home, USA Today reports.
Mehran Nasseri essentially became a man without a country in 1988, when he arrived at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport with a ticket to England but no travel documents; Nasseri said they were taken in a robbery in Paris. While he was allowed to leave on his flight, British authorities immediately returned him to Paris. Because he had no passport, he could not leave Terminal 1. He lived in the terminal, surviving on food vouchers for airport vendors and contributions, until 2006, when he left the terminal, having been granted French citizenship years before.
Airport authorities say Nasseri had been living in a different terminal for the last few weeks; no one knows why he returned to the airport. The 77-year-old had a heart attack Saturday morning.