Zeitoun

by Dave Eggers

When I pick up and start a new book by an author I like, I usually know very little about its content going in.  In this case, I knew that the book was about a man who stayed behind in New Orleans when the city flooded after Hurricane Katrina, and that's all I knew.  Because the book is a non-fiction account by Dave Eggers, who wrote the brilliant What is the What, I didn't need to know anything more.

Except, that's only what some of the book is about.  It's what happened just before that water started to recede, and after that, that makes this book, and the life of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, so amazing.

Zeitoun is a Syrian American, who after spending years at sea, settled in Louisiana.  He met Kathy, an American convert to Islam, and together they started both a family and a construction and contracting business.  They owned a variety of properties in New Orleans as well, and it made sense for Abdulrahman to stay in the city while everyone else evacuated, to care for his various business responsibilities, and to look after the family home.  The early part of the book is concerned with establishing the Zeitoun's in the reader's mind, and showing how consistently they behaved according to their personalities.

Once the flood begins, the book becomes gripping.  Zeitoun spends his days feeding his neighbours' abandoned pets, helping to rescue people, and checking on his properties.  He glides through the mostly abandoned city in his canoe, sometimes alone, and sometimes with his friend Nasser.  He manages to keep in touch with his wife, who by this time is in Phoenix staying with friends, through a daily telephone call.  At least, until the day that the calls simply stop, and the focus of the book is solely on Kathy, and her challenges in weathering this latest crisis.

Eventually (after a very suspenseful segment of the book, where the reader shares Kathy's anxiety), we learn that Zeitoun and his friends have fallen victim to the excesses of police and Homeland Security fears during those chaotic days, and the book shifts into a Kafkaesque journey through a broken criminal justice and anti-terrorism system.  This part of the book is incredible, all the more so for the fact that it is accurate and is talking about the United States.

Eggers excels at this type of book.  He refrains from allowing his authorial voice room to roam, sticking to the story and what happened, as it is remembered by Abdulrahman and Kathy, without succumbing to the temptation to editorialise or commentate.  His writing during the flood is clear and beautiful, and he imbues the horror of the situation with such sublime description as to make one want to be there.

This story is very important in the way that it portrays the failings of America to respond to peoples' needs during a crisis, and to maintain human rights.  It is even more important as a testament to the strength of Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun, their children, relatives, and friends.