Terminal Five, Heathrow Airport
In 2004 Tom Hanks was featured in a film called “The Terminal”. As one reviewer put it, the film recounts “the hardships of Viktor Navorski, a fictitious Balkan traveler stranded at New York's JFK Airport. His homeland erupts into civil war and his passport becomes void. He can't officially enter the US, but neither can he return to Eastern Europe. So he lives for months in the hermetically sealed microcosm of an airport concourse.”
What is not generally realized is that the film was inspired by the true life account of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, a stateless real-life Iranian refugee who arrived at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport in 1988 without a passport and without papers to enter another country. He reported being mugged and having his documents stolen. Nasseri ultimately spent an inconceivable eighteen years of his life in Terminal One at Charles De Gaulle. In 2003 a Mr. Alexis Kouros, an Iranian film maker, suggested “By spending 15 years in that place, he has become institutionalized.” He was quite worried that Mehran's mental health was worsening. In July 2006, Nasseri finally left the airport when he was hospitalized for an unspecified ailment, at which time his encampment in Terminal One was dismantled. In January 2007 he was released from the hospital and has been living in Parisian shelters since, despite having been paid $250,000 in 2003 by Steven Spielberg for rights to his life story.
Because of errors on the part of officials who are supposed to know how to move people around efficiently, I have just spent a night on the floor in Heathrow’s Terminal Five, despite having a paid-for accommodation in the heart of London. One night is certainly not the same as eighteen years but it was powerfully instructive. Having been awarded the grand prize of first class air travel anywhere in the world for thirty days and having slept in a bed under a goose down duvet while soaring above the clouds, being attended to by three meticulous stewards; lying here on the cold marble tiles of Terminal Five and staring at fossilized bubble gum stuck to the bottom of chair seats seems a bit of a come-uppance.
Another long-term traveler, George, spend the better part of four years living here in Heathrow. After years of searching by his mother, he was found accidently by her when she brought a relative here for a flight. He talked with her and eventually to reporters. Like me he was on the Piccadilly Line of the London Underground, a train that ends its run at Heathrow Airport. Unlike me, he had no where to go. I have the world in hand and have no intention of staying here. He decided this terminal could be a destination rather than an intermediate stop. For years it was home. He reports that at anytime there are ten to fifteen homeless people living here in what is considered to be one of the most secure airports in the world.
There is some sort of disquieting quantum physical effect that happens to time when one is enduring long periods of enforced sleepless idleness in airports, or on airplanes for that matter. Time has a way of moving forward at a crawl. I had no conception that ten minutes could seem like ten hours. It would seem that the keepers of the Terminal turn on the air conditioning in the middle of the night in anticipation of the hundred thousand people that will come traipsing through at sunrise with heavy baggage in tow. As the temperature declined during the night, the coldness sucked any enthusiasm I had about seeing the world out of my soul.
Airports are designed to keep people moving, fast. They are not designed for intermediate or long-term stays for the likes of Mehran Nasseri, George, or me. Attempting to sleep in these unpadded chairs with fixed stainless steel arms is a short cut to an orthopedic surgeon for a spinal revision. Bright lights and all manner of denizens of the night operating strippers, waxers, vacuums, and trash haulers do not contribute to a restful night of sleep. I wonder how the hidden residents of this vast terminal find sleep. I finally sought refuge under a strip of five stainless steel chairs, pulling my suitcase up to my backside and putting my head on my laptop computer case.
As I counted accretions of bubble gum, waiting for about five hundred and forty revolutions of the big hand on my little alarm clock to be completed, I wondered about homelessness. I thought about all of those people I have seen sleeping in tattered sleeping bags on the hard stones of the sidewalks of central London, many as refugees from the political or emotional turmoil in their lives; people who live in a state of powerlessness all the time. The police move them on and they accrete in another corner until peeled off the pavement by yet more zealous officials interested in maintaining a tidy image of this grand tourist destination. We can’t risk having homeless people in our photos of Big Ben or Westminster Abbey.
No one has bothered me yet. Perhaps I look too clean and groomed to be considered a true homeless person who might disrupt a tourist’s happy sensibilities. Perhaps I am giving off some subtle aura that says I really do belong here and have my proper paperwork in order and have a country willing to receive me. Perhaps most homeless people don’t carry laptop computers and wear business clothes. Mehran and George both said the key to ‘successful’ long-term habitation in airports stems from blending in; staying tidy and groomed, and keeping a suitcase in hand. I am not interested in testing my ability to persist in this terminal for a long time.
It is 5 AM and an army of fast moving Terminal and airline employees, in a large imposing column, has emerged from the elevators near by. They are heading diagonally from me to one of those electronic doors that reads identity cards. Their sense of urgency suggests a time clock is just on the other side of those doors. These hundreds of people will go about their business of moving tens of thousands of people through my bedroom, such as it is.
The first stirrings of activity can be seen at the ninety-six check-in desks, fast bag-drops, service customer desks, and security zones. I approached several of the desks, revealing my status as the grand prize winner of British Airways big contest, hoping to be admitted into those secret warrens where the privileged can sit in padded chairs, take showers, and do the normal stuff that non-homeless people do everyday. The staff on the desks never heard of the contest. Even pulling out a letter from the CEO of the airline verifying my status was fruitless. The computer did not have my grand prize winner status on record. I wonder how long-term residents in here have learned to work the system. I came back here to my place and counted bubble gum accretions for a couple more hours, glad to know I will get a hot breakfast on the top of the clouds at sunrise. How do these other people scrounge things to eat? Airport food is hideously expensive. I wonder if I would starve if I had to stay in here.
As daunting as it is to lie here on the floor looking up at bubble gum, I know I will get my ticket punched in a couple of hours and be readmitted to that world above the clouds, even if the gate keepers don’t know I am the big prize winner. I get to go home and sleep in my house in my own four-poster bed, read a thousand e-mails wanting to know about my grand journey, listen to myriad inquisitive voice mails, and fill in the inevitable survey from the airline making inquiry about the level of service I have just received here. This should be easy.
But what about all those people heaped in the corners of central London and a thousand thousand other cities? They don’t get to hop on planes today and get free food, liquor, entertainment, a blanket, and a toothbrush to boot. Most of them won’t even have access to a decent washroom. At least here in the airport are many washrooms with clean hot water. As there is for me, there must be an answer for those on the street and those invisibles on indefinite lay-over in here. There is.
Community. What we are all seeking is safe community, a place where we can belong and have our basic needs met. Nasseri fled political chaos in his Iranian homeland, seeking community and safety in a new land. George was fleeing the chaos and burdens of a failed university experience, accumulated debts totaling thousands of dollars, and depression brought on by experimenting with drugs. Curiously, both Nasseri and George found a one-dimensional form of community in the very places where it would be least expected, among other invisibles living here in airports and the staff that come as an army at 5 AM. Befriending restaurant staff, food proved to be abundant at 10 PM when all the eateries close down for the night. Many of the staff in restaurants and maintenance departments are low on the economic ladder and can well understand the economic fragility of homeless living. George reported how those in the same life struggles often help each other out. I saw this everyday among the homeless over in the streets of Central London.
The form of community that George and Nasseri found in airports was substantial, one sustaining them for years, yet one-dimensional. Both were quite resistance to giving up this curious form of institutionalization that provided predictable and safe community. Yet, both these men, and countless others have lost the prime years of life to a meaningless subsistence. They subsisted at the lowest levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Their physiological and safety needs were met, but they never came close to real experiences of love and belonging, esteem, or self-actualization. There simply cannot be much friendship, self-esteem, achievement, respect from others, or creativity in a life given to counting bubble gum deposits and reading cast-off newspapers.
At some point we must face life honestly and ask ourselves where we are going. Asking this question sooner than later can save us from the tragedy of years spent under chairs or huddled in corners, as well as saving us from ending up in the wrong place. George was liberated when he made this journey inward. “Basically, you've got to face everything full on, which is what I didn't do for a long time, and it was only after a while I started realizing that I had to be honest with myself and those people around me. And as a result of that, that was one of the things that helped me sort myself out, because if you just brush everything under the carpet, you're just kind of prolonging it, because you just think that this is a normal way to live, and it's not.”
Ships are designed to leave the harbor and get out of sight of land. Travelers need to leave the air terminal if they want to experience life above the clouds and see the world. The great joy of travelling is seeing new places for the first time. I was granted the opportunity to see the world first class and have seen many glorious cities for the first time, yet none are like one I will one day disembark at.
All of us are going to be called to the ultimate departure lounge; none of us will be exempted. We will go on to see great things if we have checked our final destination. Those of us who sleep under duvets and those of us that live in here under the chairs or outside on the sidewalk downtown are going to get the same final boarding call. No one has ever come back from our final destination but many of us have heard it said that the journey is well worth the ride.
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels … on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations … And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel's measurement. The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass. And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day - and there will be no night there.
The beloved Catholic writer, Henri Nouwen, said, “When we cast off our illusions of immortality we can create the open-ended space in which we can stretch out our arms to our God, who transcends all our expectations, dreams, and desires.” The pre-eminent writer, Paul of Tarsus said, “For I am persuaded, that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”
Jesus of Nazareth spoke directly to the heart of the matter. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” My guess is the guy in the tattered sleeping bag might just get a better deal in the end.
And as one observer put it “Should you be travelling any time soon, please remember to keep your documents safe and spare a thought for the tired-looking traveller catching 40 winks in the lounge. It could be that they've had a longer delay than anticipated.”
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