“A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Reality” is the way one critic referred to Dave Eggers’ book about the Kafkaesque “trials” of a Syrian immigrant caught up in the chaotic and often brutal aftermath of Katrina. This work of nonfiction is entitled Zeitoun (pronounced “zay-toon”) and came out in July of 2009.
Before Katrina hit, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American with a wife and four children, is living the American dream. The owner of a successful painting and contracting business in New Orleans, he is well-liked and respected by both his neighbors and his customers. When the storm comes and the flooding begins he sends his wife and children to stay with relatives in Baton Rouge. But he himself decides to stay behind to protect his home and rental properties and to help out as best he can. And for the first few days, paddling through the city in his second-hand canoe, he does just that—lending a hand to neighbors, rescuing some stranded souls, even feeding some pets left behind by their owners. Then things take an ominous and ultimately horrific turn. He is arrested by armed officers in one of his own rental houses and taken to a make-shift jail in the old Greyhound Bus Station where he is locked in an outdoor cage. The guards there are both brutal and sadistic. But his surreal nightmare is just beginning. He is not allowed a phone call nor given any real explanation for his arrest, though at one point he is told that he is suspected of being an al Qaeda terrorist, principally, it would appear, because of his ethnic background. Eventually he is transferred to a maximum security prison, still without being allowed any access to the outside world. Meanwhile, his wife Kathy’s experience is as harrowing in its own way as Zeitoun’s. With no word from him for days, which eventually stretch into weeks, and after many failed and frantic attempts to secure information, she fears the worse. Even when Kathy is finally able to locate him their ordeal is far from over.
At several points during his experience Zeitoun asks himself—how can this be happening in America—and the reader is likely to ask himself the same question. It seems that the magnitude of the catastrophe, the fragility and ineptitude of our response system and the post 911 atmosphere all came together into a perfect storm, which swept into its vortex a totally innocent man.
This is a story that could easily have descended into pure melodrama. But Eggers manages to escape such a fate by allowing the story to virtually tell itself—no flourishes, no gimmicks–just clear, measured, unadorned prose. His tale is, in many ways, an intimate and narrowly focused work—the story of Katrina through the eyes of one man and his family. Yet it is this approach that gives the catastrophe an immediacy and a poignancy that more sweeping accounts cannot hope to achieve. All in all it makes for a powerful and gripping read.
-Billie
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