Baghdad notebook: “Things were better in Saddam’s time”

In the passport queue at Baghdad airport, my heart sinks. This place vies with Cairo for the title of most venal airport in the Middle East. Our luggage is minutely examined by the Mukhabarat, or secret police, then customs. Early morning becomes mid-afternoon. Our papers (scrupulously in order) lie unattended on a desk. Eventually, a customs man, with a large moustache and belly hanging over his belt, waddles over. ‘We cannot stamp these today,’ he says. ‘We will have lunch now, and then we will sleep. Come back tomorrow. Or the next day.’ Our bags are moved into a room piled high with luggage seized from other TV crews: flak jackets, lights, someone’s camera and editing gear. ‘How much?’ asks our fixer, wearily. ‘$600,’ says the customs man, dropping any pretence that this is anything other than a shakedown.

Outside, the wall still has the faintest outline of a mural of Saddam, ‘the portrait’ as his ubiquitous image used to be simply known.