DISAPPEARING IRAQ

Malcom Lagauche
In 1992, while editor of the East County Weekly newspaper, I opened the new white page telephone directory when it arrived in the office. In those days, there was no Internet, so the white pages were important in finding out the dialing codes of countries of the world. I wanted to find the dialing code for Iraq because a friend asked me to get it for him so he could call his family in Baghdad. When I went to the International Dialing Codes section, I went down the list. After Iran was Israel. Iraq was not listed. I again checked to make sure I did not miss the entry and was shocked to see that Iraq was not in the directory. After a couple of hours of fruitless calls to the telephone company, I was connected with a manager. When I asked if she knew anything about the International Dialing Codes pages, she said, "Yes. I wrote that section." I pointed out that Iraq was not included and she quickly said, "The country is not big enough to be listed." I knew this was a lie and then I told her that every country surrounding Iraq, many with a much smaller population, was included. She changed her story to, "Well, Iraq has never been listed in this section." I responded, "I have the 1989 and 1990 white page directories in front of me and Iraq is in both."...There was silence. Then, I asked, "Did anyone tell you not to list Iraq?"
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