Zeitoun (19 page)

Mahmoud died a few years later. The cause was heart disease, but the talk in Jableh was that it was simple heartache. He had never gotten over the death of his golden son, the glory of the family and all of Syria, Mohammed.

Zeitoun assumed Nasser was staying at the other house. If he wanted
to be here, he could. Todd had a boat. So Zeitoun settled into the tent and went to sleep alone.

In the morning Zeitoun rose early, said his prayers, and paddled across the street to feed the dogs. He’d gotten a bag of dog food from Todd.

“No more steak, guys,” he said. “I’m out.”

They didn’t seem to mind. They devoured what he poured. They seemed to be doing well now, and were no longer in the same state of shock as a few days before.

“See? I come every day,” he said. “I always come.”

He climbed down from the roof and paddled away.

He went by the Claiborne house and found Todd and Nasser on the porch, eating breakfast. He went inside and called Kathy.

“The cops are killing themselves,” she said.

Two different officers, overcome by the storm and its aftermath, had taken their own lives. Sergeant Paul Accardo, a prominent spokesman for the department, was found in nearby Luling, in his squad car; he’d shot himself. Officer Lawrence Celestine had committed suicide on Friday, in front of another police officer.

This hit Zeitoun hard. He’d always had good relations with the police in the city. He knew the face of Sergeant Accardo well; the man was frequently on television, and projected an air of reason and calm.

Kathy mentioned the roving gangs, the toxic chemicals, the diseases that were being unearthed and spread. She was trying, again, to convince her husband to leave.

“I’ll call you later,” he said.

*    *    *

Rob, Walt’s husband, called Kathy to check on the Zeitouns, to see where they were staying and if they needed any help. When Kathy told him that Zeitoun was still in New Orleans, Rob was incredulous.

“What’s he doing there?” he asked.

“Oh, he’s got his little canoe,” Kathy said. “He’s paddling around the city.” She tried to sound nonchalant.

“He’s got to get out,” Rob said.

“I know,” Kathy said. “That’s what I tell him every day.”

As they talked, Rob mentioned that he and Walt had left their cat when they fled the storm. They had tried to find her before they left, but she was an outdoor cat, given to roaming, and hadn’t been in or near the house. Now he was hoping that if Zeitoun found himself in their neighborhood, he could look for any sign of her. If Zeitoun happened to make it over there, there was a generator in the garage that he was welcome to if he needed it.

She called the house on Claiborne. Zeitoun was still there, about to leave. Kathy told him about Rob’s hope that he could check on the house. It was a good three miles away, and would require a portage over the highway, but Zeitoun was happy to have a clear-cut task. Kathy mentioned the possibility of the generator, but Zeitoun dismissed it. He preferred not to travel with any possessions at all. Besides being doubtful he’d be able to get the generator into the canoe, he was wary of picking up anything of value. He knew the police were looking for looters.

He and Nasser made their way to Walt and Rob’s house. The day was warm and white. They decided to check on Nasser’s house along the
way, so they went up Fontainebleau to Napoleon. Nasser’s house was at the corner of Napoleon and Galvez, and he wanted to see if anything could be salvaged.

When they got there, the water had reached the eaves of the roof. There was no way to get into the house, and nothing inside would be worth it. Nasser had prepared himself for this sight, and it was exactly as he’d expected.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They took Jefferson Davis Parkway to Walt and Rob’s. The water at the house was far lower, only about eighteen inches. Zeitoun got out of the canoe and walked up to the front door. The house would be fine. But he saw no sign of the cat. He considered jumping the fence to get to the backyard, but it was this kind of suspicious activity that police and neighbors would be looking for.

They turned the canoe around and left. On the way home, they passed the post office at Jefferson Davis and Lafitte, the staging ground for helicopter rescues. They saw no helicopters, but there were rescue workers milling in the parking lot.

“You want to go?” Zeitoun asked Nasser.

“Not today,” he said.

That night Zeitoun and Nasser prayed together on the roof of the house on Dart and barbecued hamburger meat on the grill. The night was humid and quiet. There was the occasional sound of breaking glass, the growl of a low-flying helicopter. But overall the city seemed to have reached a new equilibrium. Zeitoun fell asleep missing Kathy and the children, wondering if it was time to leave.

In the morning, after his prayers, Zeitoun made his way to the dogs across the street and fed them more of the dog food Todd had acquired for his rescued pet. When he paddled back to the house to pick up Nasser, he noticed Nasser was carrying his black duffel bag.

Zeitoun nodded at it. “You’re ready to go?”

Nasser said he was. He was ready to be evacuated. Zeitoun would be sad to see him go, but he was happy to know that his friend would be safe, and that, even better, Zeitoun would no longer have to share his tent. Nasser got in the canoe and they were off.

They made their way to the post-office parking lot. They had passed it together a half-dozen times, and always Zeitoun had asked Nasser if he was prepared to leave, but he had not been ready, not until now.

“There’s your ride,” Zeitoun said, pointing to an orange helicopter in the distance, resting on the ground.

They paddled closer and realized there was something strange about the helicopter. It was resting on its side.

“Oh no,” Nasser said.

Its rotor was broken, the grass blackened all around it.

“It crashed,” Zeitoun said, awed.

“It crashed,” Nasser repeated, in a whisper.

They coasted toward it. There was no one near it, no sign that anyone had been hurt. There was no smoke, no rescue crew. The crash must have been the day before. All there was now was a mound of orange steel. Nasser would not fly out this day.

They returned to the Claiborne house, dazed. Zeitoun called Kathy.
He couldn’t decide if he should tell her about the helicopter. He knew it would upset her, so he chose not to.

“You put the kids in school yet?”

Kathy said she was trying, but it wasn’t easy.

Zeitoun exhaled loudly.

“You’re like the man who lost his camel and is looking for the rope,” she said. It was one of his favorite expressions, and she relished using it against him. He would often say it when he felt Kathy was focusing on irrelevant details while ignoring the crux of a problem.

He wasn’t amused.

“C’mon honey,” she said.

School wasn’t the first thing on Kathy’s mind. She had been determined, the night before and all morning, to convince her husband to leave the city. Mayor Nagin had ordered a forced evacuation of everyone remaining.

“A forced evacuation,” she repeated.

Officials were concerned about the spread of E. coli, the risk of typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery. Unsanitary conditions would threaten the health of anyone still in the area.

“I’m not drinking the water,” he said.

“What about the toxic waste?” she asked. “You know the crap buried underground there.” She reminded him that parts of the city had been built on landfills containing arsenic, lead, mercury, barium, and other carcinogens. “What if that stuff leaches through?”

Zeitoun didn’t know what to say.

“I’ll be careful,” he said.

What he didn’t say was that he was considering leaving. Everything was becoming more difficult, and there was less for him to do. Fewer people were left in the city, and fewer still needed help. There was only
the matter of his properties, looking after them, and of course the dogs. Who would feed the dogs, if not him? For now, he told her it would be fine, that he would be careful. That he loved her and would call her in a few hours.

He set out alone for a while and before long, at the corner of Canal and Scott, he encountered a small boat. It was a military craft, with three men aboard: a soldier, a man with a video camera, and one holding a microphone and a notebook. They waved Zeitoun down and one of the men identified himself as a reporter.

“What are you doing?” the reporter asked.

“Just checking on friends’ houses. Trying to help,” Zeitoun said.

“Who are you working with?” the reporter asked.

“Anybody,” Zeitoun said. “I work with anybody.”

As he paddled back to Claiborne, a hope flickered within Zeitoun that his siblings might see him on TV. Perhaps they would see what he was doing, that he had done something good by staying in his adopted city. The Zeitouns were proud, and there was plenty of sibling rivalry that had pushed them all to an array of achievements—all of them measured against the deeds of Mohammed. None of them had ever done something like that, none had achieved on his level. But Zeitoun felt again that perhaps this was his calling, that God had waited to put him here and now to test him in this way. And so he hoped, as silly as it seemed, that his siblings might see him like this, on the water, a sailor again, being useful, serving God.

When Zeitoun got back to 5010 Claiborne, he saw a blue-and-white motorboat tied to the porch.

When he entered the house, there was a man inside, a man he had never seen before.

“Who are you?” Zeitoun asked.

“Who are
you?”
the man asked.

“This is my house,” Zeitoun said.

The man apologized. He introduced himself. His name was Ronnie, and he’d passed by the house one day, looking for a place that might have a working phone. He’d seen the phone box above the waterline and walked into the house. Since then, he’d been coming in periodically to make calls to his brother, a helicopter pilot. Ronnie was white, about thirty-five, six feet, two hundred pounds. He told Zeitoun that he worked for a tree company.

Zeitoun couldn’t think of a good reason to ask Ronnie to leave. Zeitoun was happy to see anyone alive and well in the city, so he left Ronnie in the house and went upstairs to see if the water worked. He found Nasser on the second floor.

“You meet this man Ronnie?” Zeitoun asked.

Nasser had, and had found him to be agreeable enough. They both felt there was a certain strength in numbers, and again, if the man wanted to use the phone occasionally, who were they to prevent him from communicating with the outside world?

Impossibly, the water in the bathroom was still functioning. Zeitoun hadn’t even thought to check it sooner. It was a miracle. He told Nasser he was going to take a shower.

“Be quick,” Nasser said. “I’m next.”

No shower had ever felt better. Zeitoun washed away all the sweat and grime, and what he assumed was a fair amount of oil and raw sewage. Afterward, he came downstairs.

“All yours,” he told Nasser.

He picked up the phone and called his brother in Spain. He wanted to check in with him quickly before calling Kathy.

Again Ahmad tried to convince him to leave.

“Do you realize the images we’re seeing on TV?” he asked.

Zeitoun assured him that he was far away from that kind of chaos. Not counting the armed man at the Shell station, Zeitoun had seen almost no danger in all the time he had been canoeing around the city.

“Hey,” he said, excited, “I might be on TV. Someone just interviewed me. Look for it. Tell Kathy.”

Ahmad sighed. “So you won’t go.”

“Not yet.”

Ahmad knew better than to argue. But he did want to remind his brother that even if he felt safe now, danger could come at any time. There were roving gangs of armed men, he said. That’s all the media could talk about—that it was the Wild West out there. Ahmad felt powerless, and he hated the feeling. He knew his little brother considered him overly cautious. “Won’t you please consider leaving, for the sake of your beautiful family, before something happens?”

Zeitoun was holding the piece of paper with Kathy’s Phoenix number on it. He needed to call her before she started worrying. He was already ten minutes late. He was about to get off the phone with Ahmad when he heard Nasser’s voice from the porch. He was talking to someone outside.

“Zeitoun!” Nasser called.

“What?” Zeitoun said.

“Come here,” Nasser said. “These guys want to know if we need water.”

Zeitoun assumed it was more men like himself and Nasser—people with boats who were roaming around, trying to help.

When he put the phone down and looked toward the front porch, he saw a group of men, all of them armed, bursting into the house. Zeitoun hung up the phone and walked toward the door.

Kathy woke up tense. She fed and dressed the kids, trying not to think about the fact that her husband hadn’t called the afternoon before. He had promised to call. Yuko told her not to worry. It was silly to worry. It had barely been a day, and even the regular contact Zeitoun had maintained so far was remarkable. Kathy agreed, but she knew she would be anxious until he called again.

After Yuko took her own kids to school, she helped keep Kathy’s children occupied while Kathy paced, phone in her hand.

At nine, Ahmad called from Spain.

“You hear from Abdulrahman today?” he asked.

“No. You?”

“Not since yesterday.”

“So you talked to him?” she asked.

“I did.”

“He called you and not me.”

“He was about to call you. But he got off the phone quickly. There was someone at the door.”

“Who was it?” Kathy asked. Her stomach dropped.

“I have no idea.”

She called the Claiborne house and let it ring a dozen times before hanging up.

Now she was a wreck.
He must call today
, she thought.
I’ll kill him if he doesn’t call at noon
.

At ten o’clock Phoenix time it was noon in New Orleans. Kathy waited. The phone did not ring at ten, ten-thirty, eleven—one o’clock New Orleans time. By noon in Phoenix she was frantic.