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Times: on Sir Alfred/Merhan Karimi Nasseri - airport tramp in Paris
The Times (London)
July 30, 2004 Airport tramp finds fame through film but he still snubs the jet set From Adam Sage in Paris HE IS probably the wealthiest and most famous homeless man in the world, but Merhan Karimi Nasseri was feeling a little put out yesterday. He had received only one piece of fan mail in the morning's post, and it was a letter. "I don't like letters very much," he said. "I prefer postcards with nice pictures to look at." The mail had been sent to the address at which "Sir Alfred" — as he likes to be called — has lived since a failed attempt to travel from France to Britain 16 years ago: "Terminal One, Charles de Gaulle Airport, Roissy, France." It was from a German woman, Christine, who had read that his Kafka-like existence on an airport bench had inspired a film by Steven Spielberg, The Terminal, in which Tom Hanks has the starring role, although the action has been transposed to JKF airport in New York. The film, which opened in the US this summer and will come out in Europe in the autumn, has transformed the gaunt Iranian into something of an international celebrity. A couple of weeks ago a US television network sent reporters to the red bench where he has slept since 1988. German television followed, then an Italian station. He was expecting more cameras yesterday. The film has brought him riches, too, with Dreamworks, Spielberg's production company, paying for the rights to his life story. Sir Alfred is somewhat vague about the exact amount, but he thinks that two cheques went into his account at the post office in the airport, one for $25,000, (£14,000) and a second for $220,000. According to the French magazine L'Express, the true total was nearer $300,000. He has hardly spent any of the money, however, and he has not changed because of it. Day in, day out, he still sits opposite a clothes shop in the basement of Terminal One, wearing earplugs to protect himself from incessant airport announcements when he is not listening to his small, battery-run radio. As he has always done, he spends hours reading English-language newspapers or books and leaves his bench only to smoke a cigarette, wash or buy food from one of the terminal's sandwich bars or hamburger restaurants. Most travellers scurry past with barely a glance at the well-dressed man in suede shoes, grey trousers and an Irish national basketball team T-shirt given to him by one of the clothes shops. Only a minority seem to notice that his belongings are not those of an ordinary airport user: the piles of papers, the plastic bags, the boxes, the two trolleys and pieces of cardboard that he uses as fans. Yesterday, he said that he did not mind the fuss caused by the film, even though he had been unable to start Bill Clinton's autobiography because of all the interviews he was giving. Sir Alfred was pleased to be compared to Tom Hanks: "Did you see the magazine that put our pictures next to each other?" But he does not enjoy having to answer questions over his past, his identity or the journey that led to the bench. There is little point asking, anyway, since his grip on reality has diminished over the 16 years in Terminal One, and the basic facts are well-enough known as it is. Born in Iran, probably in 1945, he was a post-graduate student at Bradford University in the 1970s, where he took part in demonstrations against the Shah. The Iranian secret services arrested him when he went home, freeing him on condition that he left the country. Convinced that his mother was a British nurse, he set out to find her but was refused refugee status by Britain and ended up on the Continent, paperless and homeless. He made countless failed attempts to cross the Channel and was sent back to France, where he was twice jailed as an illegal immigrant. His final attempt to reach Britain was in 1988, when he was returned to Charles de Gaulle airport. He says that he is blocked and cannot move, although this is not entirely true. In 1999, the French authorities agreed to award him refugee status, which would have allowed him to leave the airport and set up home. But he refused to sign the documents, claiming that he was called Alfred Merhan and not Merhan Karimi Nasseri. His story has inspired two small-budget films, although they generated nothing like the interest created by The Terminal. Hanks plays a role loosely based on "Sir Alfred", although he falls in love with an air hostess played by Catherine Zeta-Jones in this Hollywood version. Will Sir Alfred see it when it comes out in France? "They'd have to make special arrangements for me here in the airport," he whispered. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...195744,00.html |
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