By David Mac Dougall

I arrived in Baghdad today, along with producer Nicola Sadler and cameraman Ahmed Younis.

Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time hanging around Baghdad International Airport (or “BIAP” for short) – which used to be called Saddam Hussein International. BIAP really is the worst advert for airport comfort you can possibly imagine – with a hideous two-tone green color scheme, and a ceiling seemingly sculpted from pieces of left-over plastic pipe. It’s nowhere you want to be at any time, let alone on a day when it’s 110 degrees (47 centigrade).

For the first time today, I noticed the “Lost & Found” office in the arrivals hall at BIAP. We had a few minutes to kill, so I went to take a look, and found three rooms stacked floor to ceiling with thousands – thousands – of lost bags. The staff told me they keep the luggage for a year, and if nobody claims it, the contents are sold. There’s certainly no such thing as computer tracking for lost luggage at BIAP. Every baggage tag serial number is laboriously and meticulously written into a book by hand. That’s how they trace lost luggage.

Of course it’s not just bags that are left behind at BIAP by weary (or foolish, or forgetful, or just unfortunate) travelers. The lost & found office staff told me cellphones – even gold – had been handed in.

Ahmed and I tried to negotiate permission to take some photos of the lost luggage. Unfortunately, we failed in our efforts. After 45 minutes and six different managers (mis-managers?) trying to obtain written permission for us to take a single photograph, we had to leave the airport and drive to the bureau.

I managed to take just one sneaky picture with my camera phone, but the quality isn’t brilliant (thanks for nothing, 1st generation iPhone!) You’ll just have to imagine the scenes of organized chaos in the Baghdad airport lost & found office…