CBe it my passion for journalism or my immense love for cinema that I missed my flight to an unfamiliar country, to cover a news story. This incident is of September 2004. After completing my Chevening Scholarship program in Cardiff, UK, I went on a trip to France with my newly married wife. I had heard a lot about Paris. It is rightly said that this city is the ‘city of couples in love’ and love resides in its soul. Well, we arrived in Paris from London.
After spending three days in Paris, we left for Nice. My destination was very close. We were supposed to leave from Terminal 3 of Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and the ‘hero of my story’ was at Terminal 1. I handed my luggage over to my wife at Terminal 3 and grabbed my camera-gun Mike to head to Terminal 1. The attempt was to capture the reality of the ‘hero’ of famous Hollywood director Steven Spielberg’s hit film end point before catching my flight. The story did not receive wide coverage other than being published elsewhere on the Internet. Guardian Newspaper.
The search for Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who was interned at Charles de Gaulle airport in 1988, begins at Terminal 1. Due to mass agitation in Iran, Nasseri had to leave Tehran and fled to Paris. From there he was sent to London. He was also returned from Heathrow Airport and returned to Charles de Gaulle Airport. During this his passport was confiscated.
Nasseri also stood his ground and refused to leave the airport. Spielberg’s retelling of Nasiri’s story starring Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones became a smash hit upon its worldwide release in June 2004.
After spending 18 long and lonely years, this Iranian man who lived at Charles de Gaulle airport died of a heart attack this Saturday.
Read also: Long before Mahsa Amini, Iranian cinema has fought the hijab in small rebellions
find the nazarene and my flight is missing
As soon as I reached Terminal 1, I started looking for Nasri. Finding a stranger at such a large airport felt like looking for a needle in a haystack. Well, after some effort, I found Nasri locked in a corner. That place had become his personal space.
Everything stopped for a moment seeing the man who had been living for years among the books and small things kept in 3-4 trolleys. After indulging in some small talk with Nasri, I tried to get an interview; But he was angry with the Indian and Chinese media and shied away from talking to them.
Wasting no more time, I swung the camera and started capturing all the pages of Nasri’s strange and trapped life. Public toilets, McDonald’s, drugstores, airport staff and officials – I covered all these places, talked to people there and completed my story. I also did PTC (piece to camera). My heart was filled with joy that I had succeeded in my mission. I quickly took a few more shots and headed back to Terminal 3.
When I reached Terminal 3, I found that the flight to Nice had left and my wife was waiting for me sitting in a corner with my luggage. Now I was stuck in Terminal 3 in a foreign land, that too for my passion of recording the story. Still, she was happy that Nasri’s story would soon reach millions of people on Indian TV channels through her husband’s story.
Our story was that we not only had to have a heated argument with the airport staff, but also had to travel two hours at our own expense to another airport called Orly, from where we finally took another flight to Nice. Could
I don’t know how big or small this story is, but one thing is for sure: the same ‘obsessed journalist’ in me is still alive and seeing each one of them makes me desperate to file a story. While trying to find a new ‘base’ in Mumbai, I also think that if I ever met Spielberg or Tom Hanks, I would definitely tell them this story.
According to GuardianNaseri was born into an ultra-wealthy family in Iran and his father died of cancer when he was just 23 years old. At that point, her mother told her that she was not her real mother and that she was the result of a ‘secret’ relationship between her father and a Scottish nurse.
In 2003, when Nasseri was asked by a reporter about his experience of spending 15 years at the airport, he replied, “Not angry. I just want to know who my parents are.” informed of By Guardian,
The author is a former journalist and currently advisor to the Government of Chhattisgarh. He tweeted @meGauravDwivedi. Thoughts are personal.
This article has been translated from Hindi by Ram Lal Khanna and edited by Prashant. read original Here,