6 ms·

How did he afford to live there? Did he get a job in the airport?

1123581321 4y ago
He was given food, and eventually received some donations. His expenses were almost non-existent other than that, as he didn’t pay to sleep there and his lawyer worked pro bono.
warbler73 4y ago
This is a really famous case and is fairly Kafkaesque. It comes down to this: > In 1992, a French court ruled that having entered the country legally, he could not be expelled from the airport, but it could not grant him permission to enter France. He was legally stuck at the airport with no options from 1988 to 1995 when Belgium said they would take him. After that he stayed due to stubbornness in refusing to sign bureaucratic papers that did not represent his mental truth, which was affected by the years trapped and made him a bit off in the head like it would anyone. So he remained stuck. He never could afford to stay at the airport. He was trapped there by bureaucrats. Humanists recognizing his dilemma gave him food.
- blondin 4y ago
  first time hearing this story. what a sad one from all sides! we need to do better.
- netsharc 4y ago
  Reading his Wikipedia, I wonder if he was of sound mind even before being trapped there. Things like his unproven claim of being expelled from Iran, "losing" his documents because he mailed them to Brussels... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  It is amazing how callous and capricious our 'ryle of law' can be if you are the wrong kind of person. And is one thing when evil is commited out of hatred, or for profit. That I can understand. But this is worse - this evil was commited for no reason at all! Nobody benefits from it and noone asked for it! This is a massive stain on all of civilisad society.
  - downrightmike 4y ago
    Good movie though.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  > Humanists recognizing his dilemma gave him food. It would seem that by not providing him food, hunger would have driven him to take the Belgian deal. Call me callous, but by making one's bad situation comfortable, often the result is that the person stays in that bad situation instead of improving it.
ryantgtg 4y ago
The above article linked to this, which is pretty great: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/sep/06/features.features11 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/sep/06/features.featur...
- belter 4y ago
  I found this nice enough to be worth of quote here: "...And yet from the moment I sat down next to him I felt the force of his - there is no better word - dignity. Alfred seemed totally content within himself. He did not aim to please or play on your sympathy. He was not the homeless guy on the tube singing for a drink. Everything in Alfred's life was conducted on his own terms. In some sense he was a freer man than most... ...Despite outward appearances, Alfred lived a life of total self-sufficiency and order. He kept himself meticulously clean and groomed, using a nearby airport bathroom. He hung his freshly dry-cleaned clothes from the handle of a suitcase next to his bench. He always ate a MacDonald's egg and bacon croissant for breakfast and a McDonald's fish sandwich for dinner. (Perhaps one day McDonald's will have the wit to sign Alfred up for a celebrity endorsement.) He always left a tip. Alfred was not, to put it bluntly, a bum..."
  - pyrale 4y ago
    > He was not the homeless guy on the tube singing for a drink [...] Alfred was not, to put it bluntly, a bum... Probably said by someone who laments the era of garden hermits.
blamazon 4y ago
From his Wikipedia article, I imagine this book provided some income as well: > In 2004 Nasseri's autobiography, The Terminal Man,[6] was published. It was co-written by Nasseri with British author Andrew Donkin and was reviewed in The Sunday Times as being "profoundly disturbing and brilliant".[9] Hopefully he also received some money from the 2004 Tom Hanks movie which used an adaptation of his story to earn $219 million on a budget of $60 million. For context his primary stay in the airport was until 2006, it seems he returned at a later date (recent weeks?) [9]: https://archive.ph/fYXf0 https://archive.ph/fYXf0

He was given food, and eventually received some donations. His expenses were almost non-existent other than that, as he didn’t pay to sleep there and his lawyer worked pro bono.

warbler73 4y ago

This is a really famous case and is fairly Kafkaesque. It comes down to this: > In 1992, a French court ruled that having entered the country legally, he could not be expelled from the airport, but it could not grant him permission to enter France. He was legally stuck at the airport with no options from 1988 to 1995 when Belgium said they would take him. After that he stayed due to stubbornness in refusing to sign bureaucratic papers that did not represent his mental truth, which was affected by the years trapped and made him a bit off in the head like it would anyone. So he remained stuck. He never could afford to stay at the airport. He was trapped there by bureaucrats. Humanists recognizing his dilemma gave him food.

blondin 4y ago
first time hearing this story. what a sad one from all sides! we need to do better.
netsharc 4y ago
Reading his Wikipedia, I wonder if he was of sound mind even before being trapped there. Things like his unproven claim of being expelled from Iran, "losing" his documents because he mailed them to Brussels... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
It is amazing how callous and capricious our 'ryle of law' can be if you are the wrong kind of person. And is one thing when evil is commited out of hatred, or for profit. That I can understand. But this is worse - this evil was commited for no reason at all! Nobody benefits from it and noone asked for it! This is a massive stain on all of civilisad society.
- downrightmike 4y ago
  Good movie though.
dotancohen 4y ago
> Humanists recognizing his dilemma gave him food. It would seem that by not providing him food, hunger would have driven him to take the Belgian deal. Call me callous, but by making one's bad situation comfortable, often the result is that the person stays in that bad situation instead of improving it.

ryantgtg 4y ago

The above article linked to this, which is pretty great: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/sep/06/features.features11 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/sep/06/features.featur...

belter 4y ago
I found this nice enough to be worth of quote here: "...And yet from the moment I sat down next to him I felt the force of his - there is no better word - dignity. Alfred seemed totally content within himself. He did not aim to please or play on your sympathy. He was not the homeless guy on the tube singing for a drink. Everything in Alfred's life was conducted on his own terms. In some sense he was a freer man than most... ...Despite outward appearances, Alfred lived a life of total self-sufficiency and order. He kept himself meticulously clean and groomed, using a nearby airport bathroom. He hung his freshly dry-cleaned clothes from the handle of a suitcase next to his bench. He always ate a MacDonald's egg and bacon croissant for breakfast and a McDonald's fish sandwich for dinner. (Perhaps one day McDonald's will have the wit to sign Alfred up for a celebrity endorsement.) He always left a tip. Alfred was not, to put it bluntly, a bum..."
- pyrale 4y ago
  > He was not the homeless guy on the tube singing for a drink [...] Alfred was not, to put it bluntly, a bum... Probably said by someone who laments the era of garden hermits.

blamazon 4y ago

From his Wikipedia article, I imagine this book provided some income as well: > In 2004 Nasseri's autobiography, The Terminal Man,[6] was published. It was co-written by Nasseri with British author Andrew Donkin and was reviewed in The Sunday Times as being "profoundly disturbing and brilliant".[9] Hopefully he also received some money from the 2004 Tom Hanks movie which used an adaptation of his story to earn $219 million on a budget of $60 million. For context his primary stay in the airport was until 2006, it seems he returned at a later date (recent weeks?) [9]: https://archive.ph/fYXf0 https://archive.ph/fYXf0