The terminal

For some people, the airport is just the place where they can take a plane from A to B, a place usually overcrowded, so they try to spend as little time there as possible. They don’t get the magic of the place, I say. Airports are more than modern architecture, terminals, shops, libraries, restaurants or brand bags stands. It’s the pure essence of life.

I am unduly fascinated by airports and usually make sure I arrive several hours before my plane takes off, just to have time to “feel the place”I would sit at a table with view over the interior killing time in a coffee shop, while sipping my cup of caramel or vanilla latte with a croissant or a pain-au-chocolate (or whatever I might crave while there). Strangely enough for a plane traveler, I don’t really like to sit by the window to see the planes taking off, that makes me feel quite sad, as they will be gone forever and I’ll never learn the stories of their passengers. 

On the contrary, I love to browse over all the faces and the agitation of people transiting more or less in a hurry, and the noise of the continuu commotion in the terminal is music to my ears. Grown-ups travelling together with their children, busy travelers picking up last minutes gifts, teenagers hurrying to start the adventure of their life, retired people rediscovering the joy of life through traveling – they make me feel like I belong to a bigger community.  The community of those heading to somewhere else.

I watched first time The Terminal few years ago and didn’t cross my mind to google it to find out more, so I though it was the imagination of some author or film producer. How is that possible to live at the airport for almost a year? Nobody will let you to do that, rest assured that the police or immigration officers will give you a lift somewhere. But I enjoyed the story – the film does have a well thought plot and Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta Jones are remarkable actors. I would even fantasized a little about living myself at the airport at least for a month or so and how refreshing and energising that will be.

So when I came across The Terminal on Netflix again, I decided to google it a little and to my surprise I learned that was inspired by a true story of an Iranian born man who spent….wow, 18 years at the Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris, stuck in his desire to fly to London!!!

Now, I don’t wonder that he fell into a stupid bureaucratic “black hole” at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. While transiting Paris I myself come to realise how —well, I wouldn’t say stupid or mean, but incompetents some of the airports employees were and how they “helped” me to lose my seat upgrade and almost caused me to lose the plane all together (but that’s another story).

However, the similarities between the real story of Mehran Karimi Nasser, or Sir Alfred how he likes to call himself, and the film made by Steven Spielberg end pretty soon. The real man lives at the airport for a while, setting his living room on a red bench and using the airports bathrooms to have showers and groom himself. What Mehran Nasser experienced at the terminal 1 in Paris is totally different from what Viktor Navorski, a fictitious Bulgarian traveler, did at gate 67 at the different airport (JFK in New York). Viktor socialize, got a job, got romantically involved with a stewardess, helped others, while Sir Alfred Mehran spent his time mostly reading newspapers and books. He complains of loneliness in an interview, which I completely understand. In real life, people transiting the airports mind their business usually, don’t get involved with each other. Looking at their phones or talking to the ones left behind home, they are blind to the people in front of them. You can spend a full whole day in airport and still no one will ask you if you’re hungry, what you’re waiting for and where you’re going.