The dogged persistence of a man of Indian origin, who exiled himself in the transit lounge of a Kenyan airport for 13 months, paid off when he won his battle for a British passport.
Sanjai Shah, 43, who was given the passport on Thursday, had been sent back to Kenya by immigration staff at Britain's Heathrow airport in May 2004. However, he refused to leave the Nairobi international airport's transit lounge until his row with the Home Office was resolved.
In a story similar to that of The Terminal - the Tom Hanks film about a man stranded at New York's John F Kennedy International Airport because his country ceased to be recognised following a bloody conflict there -- Shah vowed not to leave the Nairobi airport until he was allowed to board an aircraft to Britain.
Since then, the former underwear factory manager slept on hard floors in brightly-lit corridors, washed in public lavatories and survived on hand-outs while watching cricket on television in the lounge bar.
"When the British came to tell me the good news, I was crying tears of joy," the Daily Telegraph on Friday quoted Shah as saying.
His self-imposed sentence started after he applied for a British 'overseas citizen' passport, which is granted to certain people in former British protectorates. This would allow him to visit Britain without a visa, but not to work or live in the country. In line with local regulations, he renounced his Kenyan citizenship and gave up his old travel documents once he had received his British passport.
Shah's ordeal began on May 27 last year when he boarded an aircraft for Heathrow with £ 850 and the address of a cousin in Hounslow. His error, however, was to buy a one-way ticket, raising the authorities' suspicions that he intended to stay in the country for more than two months. After detaining him for three days, they stamped the words 'prohibited immigrant' into his passport and put him on an aircraft back to Nairobi. Finding himself in diplomatic limbo, Shah chose to remain at the airport in Nairobi, rather than risk the uncertainty of taking a three-month Kenyan visa.
He spent his days wandering the corridors and halls of the terminal and talking to the airport staff who befriended him. His wife, Rashimita, and son, Veer, 15, visited him once a week with clean laundry, food and money. "My son gives me courage," said Shah, who wants to live in Britain so that his 'clever boy' can attend university in Britain. Shah, who had pledged to continue his protest for another year if necessary, said he would probably remain at the airport until July 12, when he will take part in a British citizenship ceremony.
Shah said that of all things, it was the sunshine that he had missed the most.
