Zeitoun

Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Syrian American who was falsely imprisoned in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But Dave Eggers' narrative nonfiction is not about a confrontation between the U.S. and Islam after 9/11. It is a book about what a colossal f---up the rescue efforts were. It is above all a very personal story about how one man reacted to danger and responsibility and how that affected his family.Zeitoun was arrested in flooded New Orleans on suspicion of looting. He was arrested along with another Syrian American and two white Americans. Under the circumstances, the arrest itself was not a grievous miscarriage of justice. The subsequent treatment of all four men and the violation of their civil rights was.Zeitoun is released on bail after 20 days. He did not eat or sleep well during his captivity, so he lost 20 pounds and looked a good deal older. His family, worried literally sick because he had no opportunity to call them, and especially his wife, were traumatized.But the others arrested with Zeitoun on the same flimsy evidence were held much longer -- six to eight months. We are not even sure from Eggers' account if one or the other of them wasn't actually guilty of looting.Zeitoun himself, whom the reader comes to know fairly well, castigated himself for his "hubris" in staying in New Orleans because deep down he wanted to emulate the heroism of his older brother, a champion swimmer who was prematurely killed in a car accident in the full blossom of youth. Even if he was justified in staying through the storm to take care of his house, his business and his rental properties, and even if he was able to help rescue stranded people in the first days of flooding, he owed it to his family, he felt in retrospect, to have availed himself of emergency evacuation possibilities as the crisis dragged on.He didn't evacuate and although he evaded encounters with armed gangs he was in suspicious enough circumstances to get arrested. He was together with the other three men in his rental property, where the landline phone still worked, with a blue and white motorboat that had been seen in a looting incident and electronic equipment piled on the dining room table to save it from the flood waters. It didn't help that two of the men arrested had large amounts of cash with them.The narrative of Camp Greyhound and the Hunt prison is riveting and dramatic. In some ways it overshadows some equally interesting narratives. The back story of Zeitoun growing up in Syria and roving at sea for 10 years before settling in Louisiana and courting his wife, Kathy, a young divorcee and convert to Islam.The narrative of Katrina and its aftermath was for me the most gripping. Like a good catastrophe film, the book eases into the event showing people going about their lives as usual, as radio bulletins of increasing seriousness warn of Katrina's approach. Zeitoun's family evacuated and he remains in his home, placing buckets to catch leaks as the storm blows over. He uses his secondhand canoe to silently paddle through flooded neighborhoods, hearing cries for help and summoning rescue teams for an elderly couple, a disabled woman and others. He hears dogs trapped in a couple of houses and finds a way to feed them, returning every day to give them food and water. He visits his rental properties, his mosque, he pitches a tent on the flat roof of his garage to escape the heat and odor of the house.Zeitoun is a resourceful, honest man that you cannot help but admire. Whatever his motivation, he responds generously and courageously to the unexpected crisis resulting from the storm. Perhaps it would have been wiser to evacuate, but it was hardly hubris to stay. He could not anticipate the grief that would come to his family when his arrest made him suddenly incommunicado. One tie keeping him in the city was the need to feed those dogs, who in the end died of starvation during his captivity, a note of true pathos.Eggers tells the story resolutely from the point of view of Abdul and Kathy Zeitoun. We are asked to swallow without comment Kathy's feeling of "liberation" as a woman in Islam, even though we know that women in Islam do not enjoy anything like what we would consider equality or freedom. The generosity and caring of the Muslims in the narrative are contrasted with the callousness of the non-Muslims, including Kathy's own family. It is all true, but of course it is not the whole story.The book is what is now called narrative nonfiction. Dialogue is fabricated on the basis of recalled conversations. Interior monologues are based on long interviews with the subjects. There are touching family photos. In his earlier book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Eggers, by his own account, compressed incidents and timeframes. Since he makes no mention of it here, he presumably is not doing it in this book. In any case, the book reads like a good novel. It takes us inside characters, it transports us into a dramatic situation, it moves to a climax and it leaves us transformed in some small way.While Eggers' earlier book, which I have not read, was a type of memoir, this is more journalism the way Tom Wolfe envisioned it in The Right Stuff and his other early works. The writing is elegant but not showy, letting the story grip the reader directly. It is artful, but the art achieves a transparency like that described by Roland Barthes in The Degree Zero of Writing -- the language does not refract or distort the meaning but conveys it with great lucidity.Zeitoun reduces the drama and catastrophe of Katrina to a personal story that each of us can relate to. It gives the freefloating outrage that all of us instinctively feel about the criminal incompetence of the rescue efforts a focus on a genuine injustice and real harm to a family. It shows us that just because the Zeitouns, like so many others in New Orleans, are able to move on, damaged but resourceful and hopeful, does not remove the injustice that was done. Probably few will ever pay for the crimes committed, but that is no reason to forget the misdeeds and no reason not to punish those we can.

Zeitoun is a moving story about a good man in an impossible time.The simplistic tone of the text contributes to the story flow. This is a story about a man, an extended family, a time, and the disaster following Hurricane Katrina. The simplicity of the writing keeps the story moving forward.The first half of the book tells us about a man, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Muslim Syrian immigrant to New Orleans, his business, his wife Kathy, and their extended family. Zeitoun is a hardworking, decent, husband, father and employer who provides quality contracting services in New Orleans. A portion of his life and perspective is colored by his Muslim faith. As American readers, we are accustomed to seeing protagonists' lives colored by their Catholic, Fundamental or Jewish faith, and it may seem a little odd to watch a protagonist whose life is colored by a faith with which are not as familiar.Zeitoun's faith is not much of an issue, until the deluge of Katrina, and then his faith appears to color both his perceptions of how he is treated and also effect the treatment he receives. I imagine Tim Tebow affects others in similar ways and feels similar effects.The second half of the book deals with the collapse of civil society in New Orleans following Katrina and the 23 day imprisonment of Zeitoun. Eggers describes the Kafkaesque nightmare of the innocent in prison. The imprisoned have no access to counsel, much less the ability to make a phone call to their families. The imprisoned are subjected to repeated abusive conduct; humiliating searches; pepper spraying; inadequate medical care; and a judicial system that seems to perpetuate the broken system rather than try to fix it. To me, however, the story of Zeitoun's incarceration and failings of the justice system, seem far less interesting than the story of the man and family that have also been trapped and overwhelmed by the aftermath of Katrina.In an afterword, Eggers apologizes for the prison conditions as being "simply overwhelmed after Katrina." This apology by the author seems inconsistent with his protagonist's observations on the well-organized logistical efforts of men and machines required to create the prison, when compared to the disorganized logistical efforts of those attempting to rescue the civilians in New Orleans.Eggers compares the damage done to innocent, imprisoned individuals by our "blind grasping fight against threats seen and unseen," with bycatch. I think Eggers gives too much credit to those engaged in the "war on terror." Unlike those engaged in the fishing industry that provides food for many people, large portions of the "the war on terror," such as the costly and ineffective Potemkin security villages created by TSA, seem directed not at keeping us safe, but at giving the appearance that someone is trying to keep us safe.In the end, however, the question may not be the good faith or bad faith of our security forces, but whether the overall effects justify the real, and devastating effects on the bycatch, those collaterally damaged by our war on Islamic terror.At end of the book, I was left wondering what happened to Zeitoun's cellmates. Zeitoun was released from confinement, partially as the result of frantic familial efforts, after 23 days. His cellmates, equally innocent, spent 5 months, six months and 8 months. Maybe these cellmates are just stand-ins for thousands of other innocents accused. Although I understand this is the story of Zeitoun and his family, I would feel better about Zeitoun, if I knew what he had done, upon his release, to assist his cellmates, as he had assisted his neighbors. Maybe the whole experience was so exhausting, that he simply had nothing else to give. Maybe he did all he could. As a reader, I just don't know. This unanswered question about the apparent abandonment of his comrades leads me to question the protagonist's reasons for his earlier ordinary acts of heroism.In any event, Zeitoun is a compelling read and brings life to two separate stories that repeat, and here are intertwined in America: the immigrant experience and disasters. The combination of these stories is both entertaining and educational. I recommend it.

El producto venía sucio mas no dañado. Buen libro.

Really woth it! Very attractive story. I really didn't know most of things that really happened during the hurricane Katrina!

Great story; great book. This is a non-fiction biography of one man who stays behind in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He tries to be of service to his fellow creatures, but gets served up a massive dose of American-style injustice. This book puts into words something that is often felt, but difficult to articulate. I gave several copies as Christmas presents this year and I'm glad I did. Money well spent.

El libro llego a tiempo, sin embargo, le faltaban unas 20 paginas.

Leggendo questo libro, si viene a conoscenza di tanti fatti sconvolgenti riguardo la gestione dell’emergenza Katrina. Leggere il libro dopo Essere stata lì mi ha permesso di vedere cose in modo diverso, poi essendo curiosa, ho fatto mille ricerche sia su google che Google maps.Premetto che non ho autorità in fatto di critica letteraria, personalmente posso dire che non mi è piaciuto molto come è scritto, la narrazione a tratti mi ha annoiata e avrei voluto saltare perché ripetitiva.