The Poor Shlub Stuck in the Airport for Over a Decade

The Straight Dope article
Snopes.com article

Anybody who's seen "The Terminal" would have to be impressed (negatively) by the magnitude of the beaurocracy that could keep somebody in an airport for over nine months. The movie is engaging and charming, and it shows how a clever, industrious man could possibly survive, and even thrive, despite being stuck in an untenable situation.

But of course, "The Terminal" is only a movie. It was inspired by an actual guy who was stuck in an airport, and the real guy didn't fare so well as Tom Hanks' character.

What's nice about this is that the airport is in France, so anybody not from there can bitch about it freely. Yay! I think that's the only thing that's nice. Boo.

I won't go much into how he got stuck in the airport, which the Straight Dope covers much more thoroughly and accurately than most people probably care. He's from Iran, expelled for protesting the shah, in 1988. He tried to get refugee status. He lost his documents... and he fell into a legal-definition hole. He's still there.

He seems like a perfectly nice guy. He goes by the nickname "Sir Alfred." He keeps himself well-groomed, follows the news, talks to people, has friends in the airport, and even gets his mail there. You can send him a card! You could visit him, if you go through Charles de Gaulle airport!

But he's been there so long that he's afraid to leave. Friends in the airport wonder if he could make it on the outside.

The worst thing? They never even gave him, like, a locker or something. You would think, if you were in the airport for a decade, somebody would give you a little place you could stash your stuff. He sits there with it stacked next to him. Like he needs it handy in case his plane comes?

Send him a card at:

Sir Alfred Mehran
Terminal One
Charles de Gaulle Airport
Paris, France

Hey! Another nice thing! Dreamworks paid him a rumored $250,000 for the rights to his story. Yay! Now he can buy his own french fries.