Country: USA
Genre: Non-Fiction/Memoir
Pages: 325
I picked up Zeitoun for a very precise purpose. I went through a series of extremely depressing books about extremely depressing people in December and I thought I owed myself a little break from the Prozac League. The story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun is uplifting in many ways, but like any living soul who put his physical comfort aside to help the others, he ran into problems with the authorities. Well, you know, that whole Katrina debacle where everybody and their dog that were still in New Orleans after the flood got booked in by the police for looting. Even the most benevolent soul can be accused of terrorism.
The book is physically separated in five or six books, but there are two stories going on. The transcendental experience of Zeitoun after the flood, where he camps on his roof, takes care of abandoned dogs and paddles around the city in his aluminium canoe, trying to make himself useful to people in need. And then there's the story of the post-Katrina mess, where people are randomly arrested and booked in without medical attention, without a phone call, booked in a maximum security prison and left out of existence. Abdulrahman Zeitoun stayed for twenty days at the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, but his companions stayed for five, six and even eight months, prisoners of the very system that was supposed to protect them.
The story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun is touching, fascinating and infuriating in parts, but what I thought was the most striking point of Zeitoun is the portrait that Dave Eggers draws of the Bush-era America. It's obvious that Eggers loves his country. During the first part of the novel, the life of Zeitoun is portrayed, a hardworking but very successful businessman from New Orleans, who's living the American dream. He's Arabic in the post-9/11 era, he's a good person and he's living a great life. When tragedy strikes, he's the first to help within the limits of his means. Zeitoun made a difference in his own little way.
But America had another face under the Bush administration. It was scared of the unknown and scared of change. The Katrina disaster was a bad time to roam outside the boundaries of the system. If you refused evacuation like Zeitoun did, even if it's to pursue selfless goal, then you're on the other side of the law. "Or you're with us, or you're against us" George W. Bush once said. Zeitoun is ultimately another testimony of the consequences of institutional disinterest. Help was hurried to New Orleans. Private contractors and volunteers were left to figure it all out for themselves.
Dave Eggers is a talented writer. His style is spare and his tenderness in front of the cataclysm that was Katrina, in his way to portrait the survivors, he was able to draw me into the surreal world of his novel. Surreal world that was New Orleans after disaster struck. Zeitoun will shed a new light on a tragedy which people don't know the magnitude of. It had documentary value as well as a literary charm. It's not the literary epic that will move you and change your life, but it's nonetheless worthy of your attention
