Iraq's "On-Hold" Music

Anyone who calls Iraq — and these days, the list includes journalists, diplomats, and spooky guys from the intelligence agencies — eventually comes up against Iraqi hold music. More specifically: The Iraqi hold music song, singular. Calls to three locations revealed the same track; this includes a hotel in Baghdad, the Iraqi Embassy in Jordan and another hotel up north.

Not a survey of the entire country, admittedly. Private residences probably don't use the stuff. And this doesn't account for what rebel groups like Ansar al-Islam might play, if music was legal under their rigid interpretation of Islamic law.

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Here is what a reasonable person might expect Iraq's national phone-on-hold anthem to be: a cacophonous-but-melodic blend of tambourines, zithers and the occasional ululating chanteuse.

Here is what you actually get: A scratchy, electronic version of "The Entertainer."

You may know "The Entertainer" as the Scott Joplin-penned ditty that helps keep ice cream trucks loud and intrusive all summer long. You may also know it as one of the top five offenders on the Songs That Get Stuck in Your Head Until You Receive Blunt Trauma list.

And apparently it's also the music Iraqis have to put up with each time they call the front lobby.

But why "The Entertainer"?

The song certainly has a sinister psy-ops edge to it. Being strung up with fishing line and beaten with salty pineapples would be bad; but it would be far, far worse set to the relentless, herky-jerky jangle of "The Entertainer." The trauma would likely be permanent, meaning that refreshing summer ice cream treats — and screenings of The Sting — would likely be impossible to stomach.

The pick has a certain poetry to it, however. Anyone who's ever seen footage of Africans who have suffered through some of the world's most trying and terrible atrocities can vouch for the fact that they are often neatly and modestly dressed, extremely polite and seemingly in relatively good spirits. And anyone who's ever seen footage of suburban American teens can vouch for the fact that they're often tattooed, wearing outlandish costumes evocative of bloody street brawls, and angry as hell.

Likewise, while the kids in Grosse Pointe may be boomin' the latest track by Fifty Cent, the Iraqi masses are subjected to repeated playings of what may be the lightest, happiest, perkiest jingle ever crafted by human hands.

Life is unfair. Accordingly, those who are closest to tough times must often suffer through the indignity of inappropriately cheerful surroundings. Is the presence of "The Entertainer" the mad plan of an evil tyrant? Or the grand design of a blackly humorously deity? Hard to tell from Boston.

Over here, hold music comes in a thousand flavors, there is basically never poison gas descending from the sky, and life is soft like the interior of a grapefruit.

If only we could get these damn songs out of our heads...