
The 15-Year Layover (2003) - kawera
https://www.gq.com/story/merhan-nasseri-charles-de-gaulle-stuck?printable=true&currentPage=all
======
kelnos
This story just makes me feel sad, and pessimistic for humanity's future. The
idea that it was "just okay" for a guy to live in an airport for over 15
years, and lose his freedom of movement and autonomy just because he didn't
have papers proving he was born in a particular place... it's just profoundly
sad.

It just reminds me of how incredibly petty, violent, and cruel humans are as a
whole. We're all _people_ , each deserving life and freedom, and our need to
divide ourselves into different, antagonistic tribes is our greatest weakness.
And if you can't prove that you're a member of a tribe, you're screwed.

~~~
mettamage
While I don't have sources, I think it wasn't as simple as that. I've read
that Alfred did have some chances to go outside, but he simply didn't take
them.

All I'm saying is: from what I remember what I've read, it didn't seem to be
the case that he was locked up. He kind of willingly let it happen. Whether
that is actually true is another story as I can't remember the source where I
read it from.

In any case, I do think there's more to this story than this submission is
showing (after skimming through it).

~~~
defap
According to Snopes [1], Belgium did eventually offer him residency — which he
declined — after a ridiculous 7-year impasse where Belgium said he could only
retrieve his lost refugee documents in person but France said he couldn’t
leave the airport without said documents.

[1] [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/stranded-at-the-
airport/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/stranded-at-the-airport/)

~~~
mettamage
That sounds very Kafkaesque :(

(I hope I'm using the word right, first time xD)

------
rdiddly
Took me a while to figure it out, but it appears every instance of the letters
'xe' has been removed. Anyone care to guess why?

a herd of red on (oxen)

Lufthansa bos (boxes)

his day's greatest ertion (exertion - that's when I caught on)

ercising his jaw muscle (exercising)

~~~
rdiddly
Missed the edit deadline, but here's an update:

I've got the day off today, so I'm on this like a poorly-disciplined
bloodhound. After searching GQ.com with all 26 letter combinations x_ it seems
'xb' and 'xe' have been removed, site-wide (edit: not site-wide), while none
of the other combos are affected. My test words are listed below.

So, is this starting to ring a bell for anybody? Do xb and xe have anything in
common? Defunct formatting codes? Emacs function keys, I only half-jokingly
joked?

examination

Oxbridge

excuse

Disney XD

boxes

exfoliate

foxglove

exhale

exit

Jaguar XJ

Jaguar XK

axle

axman

Oxnard

exoskeleton

expose

exquisite

iPhone XR

coxswain

next

sexual

Final Fantasy XV

Maxwell

XXX

sexy

Olympus XZ-1

~~~
jetrink
Wow, great work so far. This is really interesting.

My guess is that they were moving content out of some proprietary early-2000s
CMS around 2015. Instead of carefully parsing the storage format and
extracting the text, they dumped it and the output was peppered with garbage.
To sanitize the output, they simply elided certain character sequences.

Further speculation, 'xb' and 'xe' (for 'beginning' and 'end') were control
sequences marking the extent of something in the old CMS format

Edit: These people would be the ones to ask:

> The Software Engineering team at Condé Nast International (CNI) knew it
> needed an automated way to migrate the vast quantities of content, and it
> developed a tool to do just that, recognizing that no off-the-shelf tool
> could cope with the disparate set of content it was facing, spanning
> multiple territories, languages and content types. But to meet its hard
> three-month deadline of migrating the first territory, Germany, CNI also saw
> the need for additional resources who were experienced in key technologies,
> including Node.js and React, so it selected NearForm.

[https://www.nearform.com/blog/case-study/accelerating-
transf...](https://www.nearform.com/blog/case-study/accelerating-
transformation-at-a-global-media-company/)

~~~
rdiddly
Ha - I suspect you're looking in the right direction. Especially when they
talk about that "hard three-month deadline." What is it with the arbitrary
deadlines, people? The deadline happens once, but the mistake hangs around
forever.

------
ericmcer
The author attempts to extract some higher spiritual meaning from the
ramblings of someone who is mentally ill.

This reminds me of a story about a reporter seeking out hermits who been
living alone for decades. Searching for higher truths and enlightenment, all
he found was varying degrees of alcoholism and mental illness.

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
There is still a moral in those stories. Unfortunately, they are rather
depressing.

------
ducttape12
Some may write him off as a crazy person, but he sounds like a broken man who
just gave up. Life fell apart and no where to call home...

~~~
dougmwne
So it goes with many homeless and mentally ill. Quite a reminder that our very
sanity depends on the kindness and support of the people around us.

~~~
MaupitiBlue
Or the willpower to get up and go to work.

~~~
groby_b
This is, pardon the french, puritan bullshit.

Without the kindness and support of the people around us, we all fall apart,
sooner or later. Humans evolved as a social species, and if that social
component is removed, it has grave effects.

There's a reason solitary confinement is chosen as a particularly brutal
punishment[1]. There's a reason people with less social contacts have, in
general, a shorter life span[2].

"The willpower to get up and go to work" comes, at least partially, from being
embedded in a community.

[1]
[https://www.nmlegis.gov/handouts/CCJ%20102716%20Item%203%20D...](https://www.nmlegis.gov/handouts/CCJ%20102716%20Item%203%20Dr%20Grassian%20Psychopathological%20Effects%20of%20Solitary%20Confinement.pdf)

[2] [https://www.nature.com/news/social-isolation-shortens-
lifesp...](https://www.nature.com/news/social-isolation-shortens-
lifespan-1.12673)

~~~
vorg
> There's a reason people with less social contacts have, in general, a
> shorter life span

Or people who are obviously going to die earlier will get less social contacts
-- the causation could be in either direction. Perhaps they don't form the
social contacts because they don't want to make others who get to know them be
the ones to suffer sadness when they die first, or they don't want to burden
others with feeling they should look after them when they get sick first. Or
perhaps it's the others who don't want to risk the sadness or incur the
burden.

~~~
JakeTheAndroid
> Perhaps they don't form the social contacts because they don't want to make
> others who get to know them be the ones to suffer sadness when they die
> first

Are you suggesting that people with low social interactions either consciously
or subconsciously are aware they have a lower lifespan? That seems like a
greater leap in faith than people experiencing negative side effects from lack
of social interaction.

~~~
dahfizz
From the comment you're replying to:

> people who are obviously going to die earlier...

Your parent was giving examples based on people who are near death. If sick
old people know they are near the end, they may be less likely to spend
precious time and energy chasing after new friends.

The point is that we don't know the causality. The study is specifically about
old people too, so this seems like a plausible explanation.

------
silverfox17
There is a movie that loosely related to this, The Terminal, starring Tom
Hanks. I'd say it was a pretty good movie, I liked it.

The man this article is about also wrote a book, but I can't thing of the
title off the top of my head.

~~~
droithomme
[https://www.amazon.com/Terminal-Man-Alfred-
Merhan/dp/0552152...](https://www.amazon.com/Terminal-Man-Alfred-
Merhan/dp/0552152749)

------
dougmwne
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri)

------
w0mbat
He left the airport in 2006, lives in Paris now.

------
JetSpiegel
This kind of thing keeps happening, it's not as far fetched as it seems.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-
canada-46547794](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46547794)

This Syrian guy was in Kuala Lumpur airport for 7 months.

------
solidsnack9000
_" I'm afraid the sad fact is that he's now completely destroyed."_

A conclusion it is hard to deny.

------
nwatson
Is the subject of the story still alive, or did officials sample his
tissue/DNA at death? If so it may now be possible to track down his mother in
Glasgow ... a Scottish nurse (?) working in pre-revolution Iran, I imagine,
wouldn't be so hard to narrow down.

~~~
krallja
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri)
Sir Alfred is still alive, and left the airport in 2006. His life doesn’t seem
much better now, despite having been paid a quarter million dollars for his
life story.

------
_bxg1
The modern world is so strange. What a horrifying story.

