With the Terminal man at Charles de Gaulle

I was recently sitting at Charles de Gaulle Airport, killing time between flights and reading The Terminal Man, the memoir of Mehran Karimi Nasseri. He is the Iranian refugee who somehow managed to spend sixteen years living in Terminal 1.

Waiting for the night to fall over CDG.

The tale of the Terminal man is a rather sad story. If there is a place in Europe that could convince you civilization is merely an optimistic theory, it is Charles de Gaulle. I’ve passed through CDG a dozen times over the years, and every visit feels like the airport is quietly punishing me for crimes I don’t remember committing.

I genuinely feel sorry for the people who work there every day. But imagining someone waking up in Terminal 1 every morning for year after year is another level entirely. Nasseri turned a departure lounge into an address, a waiting area into a home. It sounds almost surreal until you’re standing there yourself, staring at all that gray concrete and wondering whether time has simply stopped.

Naturally, we figured there had to be something better to eat somewhere else in the building. We wandered off in search of it, only to be intercepted by security before we’d made much progress. Apparently the greatest threat to French aviation wasn’t terrorism, it was two hungry travelers looking for lunch.

Welcome to Charles de Gaulle Terminal one. You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave.

It was a long night. Perhaps I should have wandered over to Terminal 1 and asked the Terminal Man how he managed to survive it. He clearly knew something the rest of us didn’t.

Update: Nasseri eventually left the airport in 2006 after being hospitalized.