 |
Reviewed by Allen Appel, HSO Contributor Zeitoun By Dave Eggers. McSweeney's Books, $24 The recent fourth anniversary of Katrina has brought a spate of new books, newspaper and magazine articles about New Orleans and the hurricane survivors. Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers, is one of them. Eggers, a celebrated novelist (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and editor of the innovative McSweeney's magazine is well known for the quality of his writing and vision. His reputation and standing in the literary community has guaranteed Zeitoun a wide readership. |
Reviewed by
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
, HSO Contributor
Zeitoun
By Dave Eggers. McSweeney's Books, $24
The recent fourth anniversary of Katrina has brought a spate of new books, newspaper and magazine articles about New Orleans and the hurricane survivors. Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers, is one of them. Eggers, a celebrated novelist (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and editor of the innovative McSweeney's magazine is well known for the quality of his writing and vision. His reputation and standing in the literary community has guaranteed Zeitoun a wide readership.
The book is a chronicle of the experiences of Syrian-American, New Orleans businessman, Abdulrahman Zeitoun in the days leading up to and after Katrina. A building contractor with many skills, Zeitoun sent his wife and four children out of town and prepared to ride out the hurricane alone. Even after the levee breaks and floodwaters inundate two levels of his house, the resourceful Zeitoun pitches a tent on the roof of his garage and settles in, barbecuing food from his rapidly defrosting freezer and spending his days paddling around in a small canoe rescuing elderly inhabitants and abandoned pets. He links up with several friends, and the four of them do what they can to keep themselves safe and help their neighbors. The men find a working telephone, a rarity in the flooded city, so Zeitoun is able to keep in touch with his wife and in general finds that he's actually enjoying his role of good samaritan. This feel-good tale then takes a dark turn when Zeitoun and his friends are inexplicably arrested and thrown into a Guantanamo-style compound where they are held without recourse to normal civil rights. His wife and extended family can only surmise that this sudden silence means that something terrible has happened.
Zeitoun's story was first told in Voices From the Storm, a compendium of thirteen Katrina survivor stories, published by McSweeny's. Eggers, who obviously felt that Zeitoun's experiences deserved a wider platform, expanded that story into this book by including extensive biographical information. Unfortunately, while this material is well presented, it just isn't very interesting compared with the more compelling Katrina narrative; readers will soon find themselves flipping through the family material to get back to the main story.
Even though Eggers writes with an even, almost flat tone, one feels the sense of author outrage simmering beneath the surface of the words. The message is clear: Zeitoun was arrested and severely mistreated by military and civilian authorities because of his Arab lineage. Eventually, he and the other three were taken to the Hunt Correctional Center where conditions were only marginally improved. Zeitoun spent a month at Hunt before a missionary volunteer got word of his existence to his frantic wife who, with friends, eventually obtained his release.
Anyone, especially anyone interested in homeland security issues, who has done even the most cursory reading about Katrina and the aftermath, understands that there were many problems with the official response from authorities both leading up to and after the disaster. Hopefully, serious lessons have been learned. But Eggers' primary purpose seems to be to fuel our outrage over the unfairness and indignities of Zeitoun's experiences. This does seem to be a reasonable explanation of events, until one finds, at the very end of the book, several pages that contradicts this interpretation.
Eggers finally locates several of the police officers who arrested Zeitoun in the first place. Their story, told in a few short paragraphs, indicates that a number of factorsa mistaken identification, one of the men arrested was carrying many thousands of dollars in a duffle bag, they seemed to be in possession of stolen goodscombined to create a situation that, should have it occurred in a normal environment, quite probably would have been straightened out in a matter of hours.
The accusation of racism also falls apart in the final pages. Zeitoun was held for a total of two months. His friend, Nasser Dayoob, also of Arab descentthe man carrying the large amount of cashspent six months in jail. Todd Gambino, an American, was incarcerated for five months, and the last of them, a man named Ronnie, also American, spent eight months in the Hunt Correctional center. Simple math shows that the two Arabs spent far less time behind bars than the two Caucasian Americans. How can we then draw the accusation of racism from this evidence? Eggers doesn't say.
The HSO takeaway: a well written account of one man's Katrina experience that is marred by, first, extraneous information that serves only to pad the story, second, accusations that, in the end, don't stand up to logic, and lastly, a pervading sense of authorial indignation that seems wildly out of place considering the difficult circumstances that everyone, not only Zeitoun and his friends, faced in the aftermath. Yes, there are many important lessons to be learned from New Orleans and Katrina, but few of them are to be found in these pages.
Allen Appel is a book and media reviewer who lives and works in Washington, DC. He specializes in reviewing thriller fiction and homeland security and terrorism issues.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Company