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In the standard quasar model, the accretion disk obscuration is due to thecanonical dusty torus. Here, we argue that a substantial part of the quasarobscuration can come from the interstellar medium (ISM) when the quasars areembedded in compact starbursts. We use an obscuration-unbiased sample of 578infrared (IR) quasars at $z\approx 1-3$ and archival ALMA submillimeter hostgalaxy sizes to investigate the ISM contribution to the quasar obscuration. Wecalculate SFR and ISM column densities for the IR quasars and a control sampleof submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) not hosting quasar activity and show that: (1)the quasar obscured fraction is constant up to $\rm SFR\approx 300 \: M_{\odot}\: yr^{-1}$, and then increases towards higher SFR, suggesting that the ISMobscuration plays a significant role in starburst host galaxies, and (2) at$\rm SFR\gtrsim 300 \: M_{\odot} \: yr^{-1}$, the SMGs and IR quasars havesimilarly compact submillimeter sizes ($R_{\rm e}\approx 0.5-3\rm \: kpc$) and,consequently, the ISM can heavily obscure the quasar, even reachingCompton-thick ($N_{\rm H}>10^{24} \rm \: cm^{-2}$) levels in extreme cases.Based on our results, we infer that $\approx 10-30\%$ of the IR quasars with$\rm SFR\gtrsim 300 \: M_{\odot} \: yr^{-1}$ are obscured solely by the ISM.

Obscuration beyond the nucleus: infrared quasars can be buried in extreme compact starbursts