Tom Hanks: Terminal trouble

Nairobi, July 12 (Reuters): The saga of a man who camped out for more than a year at Nairobi airport in an African version of Hollywood hit The Terminal ended today when he took full British citizenship at a special ceremony.

Like the main character in Tom Hanks’s 2004 hit, Sanjai Shah has been sleeping on transit lounge chairs and showering in airport toilets since May last year when he began his protest at being denied entry to the UK.

But today, Shah, 43, went to the British High Commission in Nairobi to attend a “citizenship ceremony” and achieve his long-cherished dream of UK residency. “It was a long struggle but patience pays,” he said after the ceremony.

Shah initially had a British Overseas Citizen passport since he was born in Kenya when it was under colonial rule. But when he flew to England last year without a return ticket or sufficient funds, he was deported with “prohibited immigrant” stamped in his passport ? negating the document.

By then he had renounced Kenyan citizenship because local law prohibits dual nationality. So, thinking himself in limbo, Shah decided to stay at the airport outside Nairobi.

British diplomats say there was no need for Shah’s high-profile protest as he could easily have re-entered Kenya, explained his predicament and applied to them for full citizenship through normal channels. Being in the airport actually complicated and slowed down that procedure, they said.

In the 2004 film, Hanks’s character is stranded in a New York airport after his eastern European homeland erupts in civil war, leaving him stateless, unable to return but not allowed officially to enter the US. It was inspired by the true story of an Iranian-born man who has lived in Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport for 16 years. One of Shah’s priorities now is to see the film.