Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the man who was unintentionally launched to fame after spending years in a French airport has sadly passed away in that same French airport.
The Iranian man is believed to have been born in 1945 (although official documents couldn’t verify this) and spent 18 years of his life in Paris’s Charles de Gaulle, the city’s main airport.
You gotta respect this bloke, no one I know could spend any longer than 18 hours in an airport, let alone 18 weeks, months or God forbid, years.
Karimi Nasseri recently began living at the airport again but airport officials were unaware of the reason.
He died after experiencing a heart attack in Terminal 2F from which authorities were unable to revive him as per The Guardian. He passed away on Saturday, local time.
Karimi Nasseri was initially sent to Paris in 1988 after not obtaining the necessary documentation for gaining residency status in the UK, his intended final destination.
According to the British publication the Ely Standard, he was good mates with the airport workers and would frequently use the staff facilities to shower.
The whole time he lived at the airport he would sleep on a plastic red bench while he detailed his day-to-day life in his diary and read magazines.
He eventually left the airport in 2006 after experiencing health problems and was advised to recover in Paris at a shelter.
His story inspired the 2004 film The Terminal starring Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Stanley Tucci.
Nasseri reportedly copped a whopping $372,970 in exchange for Steven Spielberg’s production company Dreamworks to shoot the film loosely based on his life as per the ABC.
He also inspired the 1994 French film Tombés du Ciel which directly translated to “Fallen from the Sky”.
A less romantic translation led to the film being titled Lost in Transit in the English-speaking world.
Rest in peace, Mehran.
