We talked a lot.Īndrew Donkin with Nasseri at the airport. I stayed with Sir Alfred for three weeks to learn his life story. “Instead of our book just laying out the facts,” I said, “how about we explore the story of Sir Alfred as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma sitting on a red bench in an airport terminal?” I suggested another approach to my new editor. And, most mysteriously of all, that his mother had been an English nurse. Many rumours and myths had attached themselves to his extraordinary story over the years. It quickly became clear that the exact truth behind Sir Alfred’s background and lost paperwork was as much of a mystery to him as to the rest of us. The selling point of most autobiographies is that they tell the truth. When they replied, their letter began “Dear Sir, Alfred …” It was on headed notepaper from the British embassy – how could it not be a knighthood, he asked with a grin. How did he come to have a knighthood? With a toothy grin he explained how he had written to the British embassy in Brussels asking for help. “More because I write on both sides to save paper,” he said. “There must be 10,000 pages there,” I ventured. I did a quick calculation based on the number of boxes. Sir Alfred explained that he had been keeping a daily diary for more than a decade on paper donated to him by the kindly airport doctor. The most precious were the many boxes of A4 paper that contained his journal. His bench was surrounded by several luggage trolleys and many boxes and bags containing his growing hoard of belongings that were becoming a nest around him. He was in his mid-50s, tall, with thinning black hair and bright, intelligent eyes. I sat talking to Sir Alfred for hours as transient airport life went on around us. Film director Steven Spielberg had bought the movie rights to fictionalise Sir Alfred’s story as the Tom Hanks vehicle The Terminal, but Sir Alfred was keen to tell his real story in the medium he loved best: print. I was introduced to Sir Alfred, who died earlier this month, by Barbara Laugwitz, the German editor who had summoned me from London. The airport was a no man’s land, an endless limbo he could never leave. He couldn’t get on a plane without a passport, and if he left the airport to go into France, he would be arrested for not having ID papers. He had arrived at the airport without proper documentation and was now trapped. Sir Alfred’s full name was Mehran Karimi Nasseri.
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