Sharjah is the San Bernardino of the UAE.

Lots of hard-working people there, but many of them without much money, and if a really goofy story happens in the UAE, it’s a fairly safe bet to suggest: “And it happened in Sharjah, right?” Just as in San Bernardino or, maybe, Vernon or even Compton in SoCal.

These can be good stories, but more often sad stories. A baby accidentally left to die in a closed car in the torrid summer. Kids falling out of fifth-floor windows. A fatal cargo plane crash after takeoff. Sharjah … Sharjah … Sharjah.

The latest? The baby hidden in the baggage at the airport.

Yasin Kakande is our reporter in Sharjah. Yasin is from Uganda, and we have real trouble understanding him on the phone. A serious accent.

But any story he files, with a Sharjah dateline, we are sure to believe. Because he is a fine reporter, but also because weird stuff goes down there. Like in San Bernardino.

In the baby-in-the-baggage story, Yasin tells us that two Egyptians landed at the Sharjah Airport, which is the destination of choice for budget airlines, some of which are more than a little creepy.

Anyway, the couple’s five-month-old child did not have a passport, and his parents apparently attempted to get him through immigration by packing him in the luggage.

In the UAE, however, carry-on luggage is sent through an X-ray machine upon arrival in the country — after passport control and before baggage claim.

The X-ray machine showed the kid in the bag. Luckily, he was unharmed, but his parents are in trouble, and the kid without a passport almost certainly is not going to be able to stay. Well, neither will his parents.

A little more about Sharjah. It has as much history as just about any of the seven emirates, as a port for pearling fleets. It also has a reputation for institutes of higher knowledge; the American University of Sharjah is one of the best in the country.

But it doesn’t have any oil, and over time it essentially has turned into the warehouse and transhipment district of the UAE. Especially for Dubai, which is just south of Sharjah.

I have gotten lost in the warrens of Sharjah’s warehouse district more than once, and I have to think it’s very like getting lost in the alleys of some major (and crowded) city in Pakistan or India. Beaten-up delivery trucks everywhere, semis-trailers parked and awaiting loading, rusted buildings, young guys from the subcontinent riding bicycles, and lots and lots of dirt.

It is an inexpensive place to live, compared to Dubai or (especially) Abu Dhabi. You find families there, but you also can find gangs of bootleggers fighting over territory. In a celebrated story here, 17 Indians were sentenced to death in Sharjah for what was described as a turf war in which a Pakistani man was beaten to death.

(The death sentences were later commuted, and four of the 17 were ordered to pay “blood money” to relatives of the dead man.)

So. Sharjah. Stuff happens there. Like San Bernardino, and other cities with blue-collar roots and sprawling areas of industrial parks … some odd things can go down.

And a baby can be found in the luggage, too.