My morning writing had been happily interrupted by an unexpected request to take a Eurostar to Paris and arrive at Charles de Gaulle Airport ‘by 3pm. if possible”. This is the kind of request writers live for, but it rarely ever happens in real life. At the airport, I was to meet Sir Alfred Mehran, a stateless political refugee who had been living (at that point, in 2004) on a bench in the departure hall of Terminal 1 for 16 years. If we liked each other, then we would co-write his autobiography, which would be called The Terminal Man. Sir Alfred’s full name was Mehran Karimi Nasseri. He had arrived at the airport without the proper documents and was now trapped. He couldn’t get on a plane without a passport, and if he left the airport to go to France, he would be arrested because he had no ID. The airport was a no man’s land, an endless void that could never leave. I was introduced to Sir Alfred, who died earlier this month, by Barbara Laugwitz, the German editor who had called me from London. Director Steven Spielberg had bought the film rights to imagine Sir Alfred’s story as a vehicle for Tom Hanks’ The Terminal, but Sir Alfred wanted to tell his real story in the medium he loved most: print. I sat and talked with Sir Alfred for hours as the transient life at the airport continued around us. He was in his 50s, tall, with thinning black hair and bright, intelligent eyes. His counter was surrounded by several luggage carts and many boxes and bags containing his growing hoard of things nestling around him. Most valuable were the many boxes of A4 paper that contained his diary. Sir Alfred explained that he had kept a daily diary for more than a decade on paper given to him by the kind airport doctor. I did a quick calculation based on the number of boxes. “There must be 10,000 pages in there,” I ventured. “More so because I write on both sides to save paper,” he said. How did he become a knight? With a toothy smile he explained how he had written to the British embassy in Brussels asking for help. When they answered, their letter began “Dear Sir, Alfred…” It was on letterhead from the British Embassy – how could he not be a knight, he asked with a smile. I always called him Sir Alfred. It suited him. The selling point of most autobiographies is that they tell the truth. It quickly became clear that the exact truth behind Sir Alfred’s background and lost documents was as much a mystery to him as it was to the rest of us. Many rumors and legends had been attached to its extraordinary story over the years. That he had been expelled from Iran. That he had been tortured. That he had lost his own documents. And, most mysterious of all, that his mother was an English nurse. I suggested another approach to my new editor. “Instead of our book just stating the facts,” I said, “how about exploring Sir Alfred’s story as an enigma wrapped in a mystery within an enigma sitting on a red bench in an airport terminal?” Laugwitz considered this an unusual pitch. “I trust you,” he said. I stayed with Sir Alfred for three weeks to learn his life story. We talked a lot. Andrew Donkin with Nasseri at the airport. Photo: © Andrew Donkin Being trapped in an airport terminal meant that Sir Alfred’s life lacked any kind of structure, so he had created one. Every morning, before the airport was busy, he left his stall and went to a bathroom where he shaved and washed to “ensure the best presentation of himself”. Sir Alfred was always eminently dignified. He would then buy breakfast from the McDonald’s menu, before visiting the terminal newsstand to buy (or be given) a newspaper or three. He then returned to his stall and ate breakfast as the airport came alive around him. Passengers would pass his counter, ignoring him except for a few who would do a double take at the amount of carry-on bags he seemed to have. Sir Alfred would then begin the activity that occupied a large part of his day: the writing of his journal. It filled page after page with his spidery black writing running across the unlined paper. He wrote everything down. If I ever left him to get food, I would return to find him frantically transcribing our conversations, trying to get as many words in as he could before I returned. Even when we were writing the book, Sir Alfred was recording us writing the book. It was all very meta. In many ways he was the first reality TV star: he was permanently on the show. His own life was part real, part performance. and skilfully recapitulated the events that had just transpired. All it lacked from the airport situation were cameras, a host, a show and an adoring audience. After updating his journal (which he did throughout the day as events unfolded), he would sit down and start the papers. Sir Alfred loved to read and discuss world politics. During his stay at the airport he had taught himself to read French and German using translation dictionaries and the appropriate papers. He was a man of great learning and did not like to waste time. Lunch would almost always be a Filet-O-Fish from McDonald’s. There was a brief flirtation one year with Burger King, but their french fry machine had broken down for a few days and now Sir Alfred considered them too unreliable. In those days, pilots and cabin crew received vouchers to spend on food at the airport. Many brought packed lunches from home, handing their airline vouchers to Sir Alfred as they passed his stall. Thanks to this, he had an almost infinite supply of a very limited menu. The rest of the day can be spent in any combination of reading the news, writing his never-ending diary, or interviewing any odd member of the world’s press who might be passing by. Sir Alfred didn’t have a mobile phone so there was no way we could make an appointment with him, including me. You just showed up. It was a kind of isolation almost unimaginable today. Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film The Terminal, based on Nasseri’s plight. Photo: Dreamworks/Allstar Dinner would almost certainly be a second Filet-O-Fish. When I was there I tried to tempt Sir Alfred to try the Italian franchise or Burger King with the fully working French fry machine again. She would consider this request in the style of a parent who knows ice cream at midnight isn’t a good idea, but pretends to think about it. Then he would say, “We could, but I think today I’ll take the fish.” The airport gets quieter around midnight, although it only stops for a few hours. While we were working on the book, I was staying at a nearby airport hotel, but to really understand Sir Alfred’s life I decided to spend a few nights on the hard metal bench next to his. The lights were on all night and the loudspeaker announcements only stopped between about 1:00 AM and 4:30 AM. The benches were uncomfortable and narrow, putting the sleeper in constant danger of falling. It was hard work. After the third night, I stopped our work at lunchtime due to an “urgent editorial call” and left for some closure. On the sixth morning, the airport announcements in French suddenly changed tone and I saw passengers leaving the terminal at high speed. “They say there’s a bomb,” Sir Alfred announced casually, waving in our general area. I looked behind us and sure enough, in the now deserted hallway was a lone suitcase. About 50 meters behind the suitcase were half a dozen airport security officers. One gave me a small wave over his blast shield. Sir Alfred had no intention of evacuating the area. He didn’t want to leave his many boxes of precious A4 journal pages. “It’s never really a bomb,” he said with the confidence of a man who has seen many suitcases opened by a small robot “It’s never a bomb,” he said, with the confidence of a man who has seen many suitcases opened by a small robot with a saw. “It happens a lot. A tourist forgets his bag.” He shrugged his shoulders. Obviously, I had a decision to make. I didn’t want my career as Sir Alfred’s official biographer to end before it began, but at the same time I didn’t want to break our growing bond by running away at the first sight of trouble. So I returned to ask Sir Alfred about his time in West Berlin in the winter of 1977. Over his shoulder, reflected in the floor-to-ceiling window, I could see the spinning blade of the tiny robot’s tiny chainsaw begins to cut the suitcase. Under the table, out of Sir Alfred’s sight, I crossed my fingers. He finished describing his train journey in a snowy West Berlin as a pair of pajamas fell out of the open compartment. “Does this happen often?” I asked. “Maybe once a week,” he replied. After all, it was 2004. Just a few years after the twin towers. Maybe, I thought, pollution wasn’t the biggest danger he faced at the airport after all. Sir Alfred had many moments of Zen-like wisdom. I enjoyed watching his interactions with international journalists who showed up, sometimes with children of vacationers, desperate for a 20-minute interview. I enjoyed seeing how he would respond to different personalities and identical questions. At the end of one such interview, a reporter said he envied Sir Alfred’s freedom: “I wish I lived as free as you, without worries.” Sir Alfred pointed around and said, “There are many benches.” Surprisingly, the journalist did not respond to his invitation to a new life at the airport, but caught his flight to the Caribbean. Months later, I returned to give Sir Alfred the author copies of our book, The Terminal Man. As always, I couldn’t hit the front. I was slightly nervous because I desperately wanted him to like it. As I approached his…