Zeitoun (14 page)

It had been forty-one years since Mohammed’s death. Mohammed’s incredible rise and premature passing had shaped the trajectory of Zeitoun’s family in general and of Abdulrahman in particular, but he didn’t like to dwell on it. In his less generous moments he believed his brother had been stolen from him, that the unfairness of taking such a beautiful man so young put many things into question. But he knew he was wrong to think this way, and it was unproductive in any case. All he could do now was honor his brother’s memory. Be strong, be brave, be true. Endure. Be as good as Mohammed was.

Zeitoun tucked himself into the tent and fell into a fitful sleep. All over the neighborhood, the dogs were mad with hunger. Their barking was wild, unmoored, spiraling.

By six a.m., Kathy had the Odyssey packed and the kids buckled in. Her sisters were still asleep as she quietly backed out of the driveway, leaving Baton Rouge. It was fifteen hundred miles to Phoenix.

“Are we really leaving Mekay?” Nademah asked.

Even Kathy couldn’t believe it, but what else could they do? She had begged Patty to let her leave the dog there for a week; she’d given
dog food and money to one of Patty’s teenage sons to care for poor Mekay. It was better than putting her in a kennel, and far better than trucking the dog all the way to Phoenix and back. Kathy didn’t have the nerves for it. It was hard enough with four kids.

They were beginning what would be a three-day drive, minimum—more likely four or five. What was she doing? It was crazy to drive four days in a car full of kids. And making the decision without her husband! It had been so long since she’d been in such a situation. But she had no choice. She couldn’t stay in Baton Rouge for however many weeks it would be before New Orleans was habitable again. She hadn’t even begun to think about school, about clothes—they’d only packed for two days—or about what they would do for money while the business was at a standstill.

Heading west on I-10, she felt some measure of relief in knowing that at the very least, on the open road she would have some time to think.

Out on the highway, she dialed the Claiborne house. Though it was hours before their agreed-upon time, she called in case Zeitoun had gotten there first and was waiting to call her. The phone rang three times.

“Hello?” a man said. The voice was an American’s, not her husband’s. It was gruff, impatient.

“Is Abdulrahman Zeitoun there?” she asked.

“What? Who?”

She repeated her husband’s name.

“No, no one here by that name.”

“Is this 5010 Claiborne?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I think so,” the man said.

“Who is this?” she asked.

There was a pause, then the line went dead.

*    *    *

Kathy drove for a mile before she could even wrap her mind around what had just happened. Who was that voice? It was not one of the tenants; she knew them all. It was a stranger, someone who had found a way into the house and was now answering the phone. Again her mind took quick turns downward. What if the man on the phone had killed her husband and robbed the house and moved in?

She pulled into a McDonald’s and parked, calming herself down. She turned on the radio and almost immediately came upon a report from New Orleans. She knew she shouldn’t listen, but she couldn’t help it. The reports of lawlessness were worse than before, and Governor Blanco, in a statement directed to would-be criminals, warned that war-hardened U.S. soldiers were on the way to New Orleans to restore order at any cost. “I have one message for these hoodlums,” she said. “These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will.”

Kathy knew she should turn the dial before the kids heard any of it, but it was too late.

“Did they say the city was flooded, Mama?”

“Is our house under water?”

“Are they shooting people, Mama?”

Kathy turned the radio off. “Please, babies, don’t ask me questions.”

She steeled herself and got back on the highway, determined to drive straight through to Phoenix. She just had to get to Yuko and she would be okay. Yuko would settle her. Of course Zeitoun was okay, she told herself. The man on the phone could have been anyone. There would be nothing unusual about people sharing a phone when most of the city’s landlines had ceased to function.

For a few minutes she was calm. But the kids started in with the questions again.

“What happened to our house, Mama?”

“Where’s Daddy?”

This got Kathy’s mind going again. What if that man
was
her husband’s killer? What if she had just spoken to the man who had murdered him? She felt as if she had been watching, from above, the convergence of forces on her husband. Only she knew what was happening in the city, the madness, the suffering and desperation. He had no television, couldn’t know the extent of the chaos. She had seen the images from helicopters, the press conferences, she had heard the statistics, the stories of gangs and rampant crime. Kathy bit her lip. “Babies, don’t ask me right now. Don’t ask me.”

“When are we going home?”

“Please!” Kathy snapped. “Just leave it alone for a minute. Let me think!” She couldn’t hold it in anymore. She could barely see the road. The lines were disappearing. She felt it coming on and pulled over. She was blind with tears, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, her head against the steering wheel.

“What’s wrong, Mama?”

The highway flew beside her.

In a few minutes, she managed to gather herself enough to pull into a rest stop. She called Yuko.

“Don’t drive another foot,” Yuko said.

Within twenty minutes a plan was shaped. Kathy stayed put while Yuko’s husband Ahmaad looked into flights. Kathy would only have to make it as far as Houston. Yuko would arrange for Kathy and the kids
to spend the night at a friend’s house there. Ahmaad would fly to Houston immediately, and in the morning he would meet her there and drive the family all the way to Phoenix.

“Are you sure?” Kathy asked.

“I’m your sister. You’re my sister. You’re all I have,” Yuko said. Her mother Kameko had passed away that year. The loss had been devastating to both Yuko and Kathy.

This got Kathy crying all over again.

That morning Zeitoun woke after nine, exhausted from the howling of the dogs. He was determined this day to find them.

After his prayers, he paddled out over his flooded yard. The dogs seemed very near. He crossed the street and went left on Dart. Only a few houses down, he found the source.

It was a house he knew well. He paddled closer, and the dogs went wild, their desperate sounds coming from within. Now he had to find a way inside. The first story was flooded, so he assumed the dogs—two of them, he guessed—were trapped on the second. There was a many-boughed tree near the house. He paddled to it and tied the canoe to the trunk.

He lifted himself into the tree, climbing until he could see through a second-story window. He saw no dogs, but he could hear them. They were in that house, and they knew he was close. The tree where he was standing was about ten feet from the window. He couldn’t jump. It was too far.

At that moment, he spotted a plank, a foot wide and sixteen feet long, floating in the sideyard. He climbed down, paddled to the plank, brought it to the house, and leaned it against the tree. He climbed up again and lifted the plank to create a bridge between the tree and the
roof. He was about sixteen feet off the ground, about eight feet above the waterline.

The bridge he created was not so different from the scaffolding he used every day in his work, so after testing it quickly with the weight of one foot, he walked across and onto the roof.

From there he pried a window open and ducked into the house. The barking grew louder and more urgent. He walked through the bedroom he’d arrived in, hearing the dogs grow more hysterical. As he strode through the second-floor hallway he saw them: two dogs, a black Labrador and a smaller mixed breed, in a cage. They had no food, and their water dish was empty. They seemed confused enough to bite him, but he didn’t hesitate. He opened the cage and let them out. The Labrador ran past him and out of the room. The smaller dog cowered in the cage. Zeitoun stepped back to give him room, but he stayed where he was.

For the Labrador, there was nowhere to go. He tried the stairs and saw the water reached to just a few inches below the second floor. He returned to Zeitoun, who had a plan.

“Wait here,” he told them.

He walked back across the plank bridge, climbed down the tree and into his canoe, and paddled back to his house. He climbed up to the roof, slipped through his window, and went down the few steps not underwater. Knowing Kathy kept the freezer stocked with meat and vegetables, he leaned down and removed two steaks, quickly closing the door to keep the finite cold from escaping. He walked back up to the roof, grabbed two plastic water bottles, and dropped them and the steaks into the canoe below. He shimmied down and returned to the house of the dogs.

Again they sensed him approaching, and this time they were both waiting by the window, their heads peeking over the sill. When they smelled the meat, frozen though it was, they began barking wildly, their tails wagging. Zeitoun refilled their water dish and they dove for it. After drinking their fill they went to work on the steaks, gnawing on them until the meat thawed. Zeitoun watched for a few minutes, tired and content, until he heard more barking. There were other dogs, and he had a freezer full of food. He went back to his house to prepare.

He stacked more meat into his canoe and went in search of the other animals left behind. Almost immediately after leaving his house he heard a distinct barking, muffled, coming from almost the same location as the dogs he’d just found.

He paddled closer, wondering if there was actually a third dog in the home he’d just been in. He anchored the canoe to the tree again, took two steaks with him, and climbed up. From the middle bough he looked this time to the neighboring house, the one on the left, and saw two more dogs, jumping against the glass.

He pulled the plank away from the first house and arranged it so it extended to the other. The dogs, seeing him coming, went wild, leaping in place.

In a moment, he had opened the window and stepped in, the two dogs jumping at him. He dropped the two steaks and the dogs pounced, forgetting about him entirely. He needed to give them water, too, so he again paddled home and brought more water bottles and a bowl back to them.

Zeitoun left the window open enough to allow the dogs to get fresh air, then walked across the plank again and climbed down the tree to his canoe. He paddled off, thinking it was about time to call Kathy.

*    *    *

As he paddled, he noticed that the water was growing more contaminated. It was darker now, opaque, streaked with oil and gasoline, polluted with debris, food, garbage, clothing, pieces of homes. But Zeitoun was in high spirits. He felt invigorated by what he’d been able to do for the dogs, that he was there for those animals, and four dogs that almost certainly would have starved would now live because he had stayed behind, and because he had bought that old canoe. He couldn’t wait to tell Kathy.

By noon he’d returned to the house on Claiborne. Today Todd was gone and the house was empty. He went inside and called.

“Oh thank God!” Kathy said. “Thank God thank God thank God. Where have you been?” She and the kids were still driving to Houston. She pulled over.

“What’re you worried about?” Zeitoun asked. “I said I’d call at noon. It’s noon.”

“Who was that man?” she asked.

“What man?” he asked.

She explained that when she’d called earlier that day, someone else had answered the phone. This was unsettling to Zeitoun. As they spoke, he looked around the house. There was no sign of theft or crime of any kind. There were no broken locks or windows. Maybe the man had been a friend of Todd’s? He promised Kathy it was nothing at all to worry about, that he would get to the bottom of it.

Kathy, calmer now, was glad to hear that he had been able to help the dogs, that he was feeling useful. But she didn’t want him in New Orleans anymore, no matter how many dogs he was feeding or how
many people he was finding and saving.

“I really want you to leave,” she said. “The news coming out of the city, it’s so bad. There’s looting, killing. Something bad is going to happen to you.”

Zeitoun could hear how worried she was. But he hadn’t seen anything like the chaos she described. If it existed at all—and she knew how the media was—it would be downtown. Where he was, he said, it was so quiet, so calm, so otherworldly and strange, that he couldn’t possibly be in danger. Maybe, he said, there was a reason he’d stayed, a reason he’d bought that canoe, a reason he was put in this particular situation at this particular time.

“I feel like I’m supposed to be here,” he said.

Kathy was silent.

“It’s God’s will,” he said.

She had no answer to this.

They moved on to practical matters. Her cell phone never worked well at Yuko’s house in Phoenix, so she gave Zeitoun the landline there. He wrote it down on a piece of paper and left it by the Claiborne phone.

“Get the kids into school when you get to Phoenix,” he said.

Kathy rolled her eyes.

“Of course,” she said.

“I love you and them,” he said, and they hung up.

He set out again, and immediately saw Charlie Ray, who lived just to the right of the Claiborne house. He was a blue-eyed carpenter in his fifties, a friendly and easygoing native Zeitoun had known for years. He was sitting on his porch like today was a day like any other.

“You stayed too,” Zeitoun said.

“I guess I did.”

“You need anything? Water?”

Charlie didn’t, but said he might soon. Zeitoun promised to check in with him again, and paddled off, curious about how many people had remained in the city. If Frank stayed, and Todd and Charlie had weathered the storm, surely there were tens of thousands more. He was not alone in his defiance.