Abdulrahman ZeitounAAEspoet-Katrina odyssey.

By Susan Larson Publisher, memoirist, fiction writer and journalist Dave Eggers follows his heart, creating engaged and engaging books. His work has ranged from the intensely personalAuAoA Heartbreaking Work of Staggering GeniusAoAuto the truly selflessAuAoWhat Is the What?AoAua book about Valentino Achak Deng, one of the lost boys of the Sudan, and his journey from the village of Marial Bai to the US. Eggers has written about human rights cases in the McSweeneyAAEs Voice of Witness series and has co-authored two screenplays, for AoAway We GoAo, one of this summerAAEs hits, and AoWhere the Wild Things AreAo, Spike JonzeAAEs adaptation of the Maurice Sendak classic, coming this fall. In AoZeitounAo, he takes up the post-Katrina odyssey of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, the New Orleans painter and contractor, who stayed in his Fontainebleau home during the storm, and in the midst of rising water after it, set out to see what he could do to help others. On September 5, he was arrested inside one of his own properties, along with three other men. A combination of Syrian-American surnames and a large sum of cash added up to official suspicion driven by attitudes toward Muslims in the post 9/11 era combined with the fear and chaos of the response to Katrina. They were taken to Camp Greyhound, the makeshift prison at the bus terminal, which, to ZeitounAAEs mind, bore a disturbing resemblance to Gitmo. Unable to make a phone call, called Aoal-QaedaAo and AoTalibanAo, unable to eat the pork that was served, Zeitoun lost weight, grew ill, clung to memories of family, sustained by his strong Muslim faith. Eventually he was moved to the Elayn Hunt Correctional Facility in St. Gabriel, La., and he got word to his wife through a frightened missionary of his whereabouts. After protracted and Kafka-esque legal proceedings, he was finally released almost a month later. The Department of Homeland Security lost interest in him; eventually he was charged with looting and released. Eggers begins with a portrait of ZeitounAAEs boyhood, fishing in the waters off his native Syria. He flashes forward almost immediately to the pre-storm hubbub in August 2005, when Kathy Zeitoun is keeping an anxious eye on the TV, while her husband makes the rounds of various construction sites, boarding up houses for elderly clients, securing equipment. After his wife leaves for Baton Rouge with the four children and endures a lengthy, nightmarish drive, Zeitoun settles in for the storm, thinking, like so many, that the city will be all right. Then on Tuesday, he wakes to the sound of rising water, to a sea rushing inside his house. He rushes to save family photos and books, lugs furniture up to the second floor. Then he sets out in his fragile craft. Answering cries for help over the next few days, Zeitoun and others rescued a woman who had been clinging to a bookshelf for hours; he made a regular stop to tend to dogs that had been left behind. He checked on his business headquarters in Carrollton and saw looting in progress; he tried to get official help to neighbors who needed it, often without success as he observed the chaos of the official response. One of the great achievements of this book is its description of the drowned city, seen through ZeitounAAEs observant eyes. Eggers brings to life the eerie quiet, the sloshing of waves in places where waves are not supposed to be, the faint cries for help, the sound of dogs barking. We feel ZeitounAAEs sense of urgency, moments of quiet competence set against feelings of helplessness, and puzzlement at official indifference; we feel the danger and chaos lurking all around, danger that will finally materialize in the form of supposed rescuers who take Zeitoun prisoner. While Zeitoun is traveling the waterlogged city, his wife goes half mad with worry. After taking refuge with a friend in Arizona, Kathy ZeitounAuand members of the Zeitoun family in Syria and SpainAuset about finding the vanished member of the family, as the floodAAEs death toll mounts, along with anxiety and fear. Finally, Kathy raises bail for her husband, and the family is reunited in New Orleans, where they set about rebuilding their lives, their city. Kathy Zeitoun suffers from post-traumatic stress, feels angry, files a lawsuit, struggles with FEMA over the unusable trailer in the front yard of one of their rental properties, then fights to have it taken away. Everything in those early days is a struggle. Abdulrahman Zeitoun picks up where he left off, restoring homes, rebuilding churches, Aohappy to be free and in his cityAo. He feels that Katrina was a test. Eggers writes, AoHe can only have faith that will never be forgotten, denied, called by a name other than his own. He must trust, and he must have faith. And so he builds, because what is building, and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith? There is no faith like the faith of a builder of homes in coastal Louisiana. There is no better way to prove to God and neighbor that you were there, that you are there, that you are human, than to build.Ao Eggers honors that steady spiritAuof the Zeitoun family and all rebuilding New OrleaniansAuwith this heartfelt book, so fierce in its fury, so beautiful in its richly nuanced, compassionate telling of an American tragedy, and finally, so sweetly, stubbornly hopeful. The Times-Picayun

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