Zeitoun (13 page)

“Really? I came to check on the building,” Zeitoun said, smiling, knowing how ludicrous it sounded. “I wanted to check on you.”

Todd couldn’t believe it.

Zeitoun and Frank got out of the canoe and tied it to the porch. They were both happy to stand on solid ground again.

Todd offered them beers. Zeitoun passed. Frank accepted and sat on the porch steps while Zeitoun went inside.

Todd lived in the first-floor unit of the building, and had brought all of his possessions up to the second floor. The front rooms and hallway of the house were full of furniture, chairs and desks stacked on tables and couches. Various electronics saved from the flood were now resting on the dining-room table. It looked like a haphazard estate sale.

The damage to the house was extensive but not irreparable. Zeitoun knew the basement would be a loss, and might not be habitable for some time. But the first and second floors had not been badly harmed, and this gave Zeitoun comfort. There was a lot of dirt, mud, grime—much of it from Todd moving things upstairs and rushing in and out of the house—but the damage could have been far worse.

Zeitoun learned from Todd that because the house’s phone box was above the water line, the landline was still working. He immediately dialed Kathy’s cell phone.

“Hello? I’m here,” he said.

She almost screamed. She hadn’t realized how worried she’d been.
“Alhamdulilah
,” she said, Arabic for
Praise be to God
. “Now get out.”

He told her he would not be leaving. He told her about the woman in the ballooning dress in the foyer, how he had lifted the ladder to save her. He told her about the fishermen, and Frank, and the two elderly couples. He was talking so fast she laughed.

“So when do you plan to leave?” she asked.

“I don’t,” he said.

He tried to explain. If he left, what would he do? He would be in a home full of women, with nothing to occupy himself. He would eat, watch TV, and be left to worry from afar. Here, in the city, he could stay and monitor developments. He could help where needed. They had a half-dozen properties to look after, he reminded her. He was safe, he had food, he could take care of himself and prevent further damage.

“Really? I want to see this,” he said.

He wanted to see everything that had happened and would happen with his own eyes. He cared about this city and believed in his heart he could be of use.

“So you feel safe?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said. “This is good.”

Kathy knew that she couldn’t dissuade him. But how would she explain to her children, as they watched images of the city drowning, that their father was there by choice, paddling around in a secondhand canoe? She tried to reason with him, noting that the TV reports were saying that things were only getting worse, that the water would soon become infected with all manner of pollutants—oil, garbage, animal remains—and that diseases would soon follow.

Zeitoun promised to be careful. He promised to call back at noon the next day, from the house on Claiborne.

“Call every day at noon,” she said.

He said he would.

“You better,” she said.

*    *    *

They hung up. Kathy turned on the television. The news led with reports of lawlessness and death. The media consensus was that New Orleans had descended into a “third-world” state. Sometimes this comparison was made with regard to the conditions, where hospitals were not open or working, where clean water and other basic services weren’t available. In other instances, the words were spoken over images of African American residents wilting in the heat outside the Morial Convention Center or standing on rooftops waving for help. There were unverified reports of roving gangs of armed men, of guns being fired at helicopters trying to rescue patients from the roof of a hospital. Residents were being referred to as refugees.

Kathy was certain Zeitoun was unaware of the level of danger being reported. He may have felt safe where he was in Uptown, but what if there really was chaos, and that chaos was simply making its way to him? She was reluctant to believe the hyperbolic and racially charged news coverage, but still, things were devolving. Most of those left in the city were trying desperately to get out. She couldn’t stand it. She called the house on Claiborne again. No answer.

He was already gone. Zeitoun and Frank were paddling back to Zeitoun’s house on Dart Street. As they made their way home, passing a half-dozen fan boats along the way, it occurred to Zeitoun that he and Frank had heard the people they had helped, in particular the old woman floating inside her home, because they were in a canoe. Had they been in a fan boat, the noise overwhelming, they would have heard nothing. They would have passed by, and the woman likely would not have survived another night. It was the very nature of this small, silent craft that allowed them to hear the quietest cries. The canoe was good, the silence was crucial.

*    *    *

Zeitoun dropped Frank at his house and made for home. His paddle kissed the clean water, his shoulders worked in perfect rhythm. Zeitoun had traveled five, six miles already that day, and he wasn’t tired. Night was falling, and he knew he had to be home, safe on his roof. But he was sorry to see the day end.

He tied the canoe to the back porch and climbed up into the house. He retrieved a portable grill and brought it to the roof. He made a small fire and cooked chicken breasts and vegetables he’d thawed that day. The night fell as he ate, and soon the sky was darker than any he’d known in New Orleans. The sole light came from a helicopter circling downtown, looking tiny and powerless in the distance.

Using bottled water, Zeitoun cleaned up and prayed on the roof. He crawled into the tent, his body aching but his mind alive, playing back the events of the day. He and Frank really had saved that woman, hadn’t they? They had. It was a fact. They had brought four others to safety, too. And there would be more to do tomorrow. How could he explain to Kathy, to his brother Ahmad, that he was so thankful he had stayed in the city? He was certain he had been called to stay, that God knew he would be of service if he remained. His choice to stay in the city had been God’s will.

Too excited to sleep, he went back through the window and into the house. He wanted to find the photo of Mohammed again. He’d forgotten who was with him in the picture—was it Ahmad?—and he wanted to see the expression on Mohammed’s face, that world-conquering smile. He retrieved the box of pictures, and while looking for that one he found another.

He’d forgotten about this photo. There he was, Mohammed with the vice president of Lebanon. Zeitoun hadn’t seen the image for a few years. Mohammed wasn’t even twenty, and he’d won a race starting in Saida and ending in Beirut, a distance of twenty-six miles. The crowd was stunned. He had come out of nowhere, Mohammed Zeitoun, a sailor’s son from the tiny island of Arwad, and stunned everyone with his strength and endurance. Zeitoun knew his father, Mahmoud, was somewhere in the crowd. He never missed a race. But it had not always been so.

Mahmoud wanted Mohammed, and all of his sons, working on dry land, so Mohammed spent his early teenage years as a craftsman, laying brick and apprenticing for an ironsmith. He was a powerfully built young man, and was finished with school at fourteen. At eighteen he looked much older, with a full mustache and a square jaw. He was both a workhorse and a charmer, admired equally by his elders and the young women in town.

With his father’s grudging approval, Mohammed crewed on local fishing boats in the afternoons and evenings, and even at fourteen, after a full day of fishing miles from land, Mohammed insisted on swimming to shore. The other fishermen would have barely pulled in the last net when they would hear a splash and see Mohammed cutting through the sea, racing them to the beach.

Mohammed didn’t tell his father about such endeavors, and he certainly didn’t tell him when, a few years later, he decided that he was destined to be the world’s greatest long-distance swimmer.

It was 1958. Egypt and Syria, reacting to a number of political factors, including growing American influence in the region, merged, creating the United Arab Republic. The union was meant to create a more powerful bloc, one that might grow to include Jordan, Saudi
Arabia, and others. There was wide public support for the alliance, pride bursting from the streets and windows of Syria and Egypt, the citizens of both countries seeing the union as a step along the way to a broader alignment between the Arab states. There were parades and celebrations from Alexandria to Lattakia.

One of the commemorative events was a race between Jableh and Lattakia, in which swimmers from all over the Arab world would swim thirty kilometers through the Mediterranean. It was the first race of its kind on the Syrian coast, and eighteen-year-old Mohammed followed every step, from the preparations to the race itself. He watched the swimmers train, studying their strokes and regimen, longing to be part of it himself. He managed to be appointed to the crew of the guide boat for one of the competitors, Mouneer Deeb, which would keep pace with him along the race’s route.

Along the way, unable to contain himself, Mohammed jumped in and swam alongside Deeb and the other contestants. He not only kept
up with the professionals, he impressed one of the judges. “That boy is great,” the judge said. “He is going to be a champion.” From that day on Mohammed thought of little else but the fulfillment of that prophecy.

Still only eighteen years old, he worked mornings as a mason and ironsmith, afternoons as a fisherman, and at night he began to train for the next year’s race. He kept his training secret from his father, even when he undertook two long-distance tests, one between Lattakia and Jableh and another between Jableh and Baniyas. Soon enough, though, Mahmoud learned of his son’s aspirations, and, fearing he would lose his son to the unforgiving sea that had almost taken his own life, he forbade him from swimming long distances. He wanted him out of fishing, away from the sea. He wanted his son alive.

But Mohammed could not stop. As difficult as it was to disobey his father, he continued to train. Telling no one in his family, Mohammed entered the next year’s race. As he stepped out of the water in Lattakia, the cheers were deafening. He had won handily.

Before Mohammed could return home, an old friend of Mahmoud’s, himself a champion swimmer, visited the Zeitoun house, congratulating Mahmoud on his son’s victory. This is how Mahmoud learned that Mohammed Zeitoun was the best swimmer in all of Syria.

By the time Mohammed arrived home that night, Mahmoud had given up his resistance. If his son wanted this, and if his son was destined to swim—if God had made him a swimmer—then Mahmoud could not stand in the way. He bought Mohammed a bus ticket to Damascus to train and compete with the best swimmers in the region.

Zeitoun found another photo. Mohammed’s first major victory came in that same year, 1959, in a race in Lebanon. The field was crowded,
filled with well-known names, but Mohammed not only finished first, he did so in record time: nine hours and fifty-five minutes. This photo, Zeitoun was almost sure, was taken during the celebration afterward. Thousands were there, applauding his brother.

How old was Zeitoun at the time? He did the calculations in his head. Just a year. He was maybe one year old. He remembered nothing of those early wins.

The next year, Mohammed entered the famed race between Capri and Naples, a contest that attracted the best swimmers in the world. The favorite was Alfredo Camarero, an Argentinean, who had placed first or second in the race five years running. Mohammed was an unknown when the race began at six in the morning, and after eight hours, when he was approaching shore, he had no idea that he was in the lead. It wasn’t until he stepped out of the sea, hearing shrieks of surprise and the chanting of his name, that he realized he’d won. “Zeitoun the Arab has won!” they cheered. No one could believe it. A Syrian winning the world’s greatest long-distance competition? Camarero told everyone that Mohammed was the strongest swimmer he had ever seen.

Mohammed dedicated the victory to President Nasir. In return, Nasir made the twenty-year-old Mohammed an honorary lieutenant in the navy. The prince of Kuwait attended the race and celebrated him at an honorary dinner in Naples. The next year Mohammed won the Capri-to-Naples race again, this time breaking the course record set by Camarero by fifteen minutes. Mohammed was now indisputably the best ocean swimmer in the world.

As a boy, Abdulrahman was enthralled, proud beyond measure. To grow up in that house, with a brother like that, to bask every day in the
glory he’d brought to the family—his siblings’ pride in Mohammed fueled how they felt when they awoke each day, how they walked and talked and were perceived in Jableh and Arwad and everywhere across Syria. It changed, permanently, how they saw the world. Mohammed’s accomplishments implied—proved, really—that the Zeitouns were extraordinary. It was incumbent, thereafter, on each and every child to live up to that legacy.