Mehran Kahimi Nasseri, the Man Who Lived in Terminal 1 at Charles De Gaulle Airport in France for 18 Years

For most travelers, an airport terminal is somewhere you spend a few hours. For Nasseri, Terminal 1 at Charles de Gaulle became home for nearly two decades.

Nasseri arrived there in August 1988 after years of moving between European countries while attempting to establish his refugee status.

Without valid documentation that would allow him to enter another country, but with authorities also unable to simply deport him, he became trapped in an extraordinary legal limbo.

He settled into a routine inside the terminal, sleeping on a red bench, washing in airport facilities, reading newspapers and magazines, writing in his diary and talking with airport employees who came to know him simply as “Sir Alfred.”

The strangest part of his story is that eventually, Nasseri had opportunities to leave.

By the late 1990s, documents were arranged that could have allowed him to live legally outside the airport, but he reportedly refused to sign them because they identified him in ways he no longer accepted. What began as bureaucratic imprisonment gradually became, at least partly, a life he chose.

His 18-year residence ended in 2006 when illness forced him into a hospital. He later lived in shelters around Paris.

Added fact: Nasseri’s incredible story loosely inspired Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film The Terminal, starring Tom Hanks. Even more remarkably, Nasseri eventually returned to Charles de Gaulle Airport in 2022. Just weeks later, he suffered a fatal heart attack there, dying in the same airport that had defined much of his life.