Zeitoun returned to restabilizing his shelter, beginning to get ready for bed. But like the night before, he was restless, his mind racing with the events of the day. He sat on the roof, watching the movement of the helicopters circling and swooping over the rest of the city. He made plans for the following day: he would venture farther toward downtown, he would revisit the I-10 overpass, he would check on the state of their office and warehouse over on Dublin Street. On the first floor there they kept their extra supplies—tools, paints, brushes, drop cloths, everything—and on the second floor they had their offices, with their computers, files, maps, invoices, deeds to the properties. He winced, thinking of what had become of the building, a rickety thing to begin with.
All night the helicopters roamed overhead. Besides them it was quiet; he heard no dogs. After his prayers, he fell asleep under a vibrating sky.
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 2
In the morning Zeitoun rose early, climbed down to his canoe, and paddled across the street to feed the dogs. They whimpered as he approached, and he took it as relief and gratitude. He climbed the tree, stepped carefully across the plank to the house on the right, and crawled through the window. He dropped two large pieces of steak for the dogs and refilled their water dish. As they busied themselves, he climbed out of the window, stepped carefully over to the next-door roof, and made his way into the second house to feed the second pair of dogs. They barked and wagged their tails, and he dropped two pieces of lamb between them and refilled their water. He left through the window, climbed down to his canoe, and paddled off.
It was time to see what had become of his office building. It was about a half mile away, just off Carrollton, a nearby road lined with warehouses, chain stores, and gas stations. The water was filthy now, streaked with oil and spotted with detritus. Anyone left to wade through this would become sick, he was sure. But so far this day, he had seen no one in the water. The city was emptying. Every day there were fewer people wading, fewer faces in windows, fewer private watercraft like his.
It had been drizzling throughout the morning but now the rain began to pick up. The wind came on, and the day grew miserable. Zeitoun paddled into the wind, struggling to control the canoe, the wind rippling the brown-blue water.
He took Earhart over to Carrollton, and took Carrollton southwest on his way to Dublin. He expected that there might be people on Carrollton—like Napoleon and St. Charles, it seemed a logical thoroughfare for rescue or military boats—but when he got close, he saw no official personnel at all.
Instead he saw a group of men gathered at the Shell station just across the street from his office. The station was elevated from the main road and was under only a few feet of water. The men, about eight or nine of them, were carrying full garbage bags from the station’s office and loading them into a boat. It was the first looting he had seen since the storm, and these men were the first who fit the description of those Kathy had warned him about. This was an organized group of criminal opportunists who were not simply taking what they needed to survive. They were stealing money and goods from the gas station, and they were operating in numbers that seemed designed to intimidate anyone, like Zeitoun, who might see them or try to impede them.
Zeitoun was far enough away to observe without fear of them reaching him—at least not quickly. Still, he slowed his canoe to keep a safe distance, trying to figure out a way to get to his office without passing directly by them.
But one of the men had already noticed him. He was young, wearing long denim shorts and a white tank top. He squared his shoulders to Zeitoun and made a point of revealing the handle of a gun he had holstered in his belt.
Zeitoun quickly looked away. He did not want to invite confrontation. He turned his canoe around and made his way toward the house on Claiborne. He would not check on the office this day.
He arrived before noon and called Kathy. She was still in Houston at Miss Mary’s house.
“Won’t be able to check on the office today,” he said.
“Why?” she asked.
He didn’t want her to worry. He knew he had to lie.
“Rain,” he said.
She told him that friends had been calling her, checking in to see where she and Zeitoun were, if they were safe. When she told them that her husband was still in the city, there was always a three-stage response. First they were shocked, then they realized it was Zeitoun they were talking about—a man who did not inspire worry in any situation—and finally they asked that while he was paddling around, would he mind checking on their property?
Zeitoun was all too happy to be given a mission, and Kathy obliged. She had just gotten a call from the Burmidians, friends of theirs for thirteen years. Ali Burmidian was a professor of computer science at Tulane University, and ran the Masjid ar-Rahmah, a Muslim student association on campus. They had a building on Burthe Street that housed a resource center and dorm for visiting students from the Arab world.
Delilah Burmidian had just called Kathy, asking if Zeitoun could check on the building, to see what kind of damage it had sustained. Zeitoun said no problem, he would check on it. He knew the building well—he’d been to functions there a few times over the years—and he knew how to get there. He was curious, actually, to see what had become of the campus, given that it was on higher ground.
“Call again at noon,” she said.
“Of course,” Zeitoun said.
Before he left, Zeitoun called his brother Ahmad. After expressing great relief to hear from him, Ahmad got serious.
“You must leave,” Ahmad said.
“No, no. I’m fine. Everything is fine,” Zeitoun said.
Ahmad tried playing the big brother. “Go to your family,” he said. “I really want you to leave. Your family needs you.”
“They need me here more,” Zeitoun said, trying not to sound too grandiose. “This is my family, too.”
Ahmad had no way to counter such a statement.
“This call is expensive,” Zeitoun said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
When he arrived at Tulane, the water was so low there that he easily stepped from the canoe onto dry land. He walked into the tiled courtyard of the Masjid ar-Rahmah and looked around. The grounds were crosshatched with downed branches, but otherwise the property was undamaged. He was about to look inside when he saw a man emerging from the building’s side door.
“Nasser?” he said.
It was Nasser Dayoob. Also from Syria, Nasser had left the country in 1995, traveling first to Lebanon. From Beirut he stowed away on a tanker whose destination he did not know. It turned out it was heading to the United States, and when it made port Nasser jumped off and immediately sought asylum. He was eventually granted sanctuary, and by then he’d moved to New Orleans. He had stayed at the Masjid ar-Rahmah during his legal proceedings.
“Abdulrahman?”
They shook hands and exchanged stories of what they had been doing since the storm. Nasser’s home, in the Broadmoor neighborhood adjacent to Uptown, had been flooded, and he’d come to the student association for shelter, knowing it was on higher ground.
“You want to stay here or come with me?” Zeitoun asked.
Nasser knew that he would be safe at the campus, with little possibility of flooding or crime, but still he went with Zeitoun. He too wanted to see what had become of the city and of his home.
He ran back into the building to get his duffel bag and then stepped into the canoe. Zeitoun gave him the other paddle and they were off.
Nasser was thirty-five and tall, with freckles and a thick mess of red hair. He was quiet, with a slightly nervous demeanor; when Kathy met him she’d thought he was a fragile sort of man. He was a sometime housepainter, and had occasionally worked for Zeitoun. They were not close friends, but running into Nasser here, after the flood, gave Zeitoun some comfort. They shared a lot of history—Syria, emigration to America and New Orleans, work in the trades.
As they paddled, they talked about what they had seen so f
ar, what they had been eating, how they had been sleeping. Both men had heard the dogs barking. Always the dogs barking at night. And Nasser, too, had fed dogs in the empty homes, on the streets, wherever he encountered them. It was one of the strangest aspects of this in-between time—after the storm but before anyone had returned to the city—the presence of these thousands of left-behind animals.
The wind was stronger now. Fighting through an angry horizontal rain, they paddled by the post office near Jefferson Parkway and Lafitte. The parking lot there had become a staging ground for evacuations. Residents who wanted to be airlifted out of the city could come to the post office and helicopters would take them, presumably, to safety.
As they paddled closer, Zeitoun asked Nasser if he wanted to leave. Not yet, Nasser said. He’d been hearing about the New Orleanians stranded under highway overpasses, and he didn’t want to be among them. Until he heard more reliable reports of successful evacuations, he would stay in the city. Zeitoun told him he was welcome to stay at the Dart house or the house on Claiborne. He mentioned that there was a working phone on Claiborne, and this was a godsend to Nasser. He needed to call a half-dozen relatives, to let them know he was alive.
They paddled back to Claiborne, passing a full case of bottled water bobbing in the middle of the waterway. They lifted it into the canoe and continued on.
When they arrived at the house, Nasser got out and began tying up the canoe. Zeitoun was stepping out when he heard a voice calling his name.
“Zeitoun!”
He figured it was Charlie Ray, calling from next door. But it was coming from the house behind Charlie’s, on Robert Street.
“Over here!”
It was the Williamses, a couple in their seventies. Alvin was a pastor at New Bethlehem Baptist Church and wheelchair bound; Beulah was his wife of forty-five years. Zeitoun and Kathy had known them for almost as long as they’d lived in New Orleans. When the Zeitouns had lived nearby, Pastor Williams’s sister used to come to Kathy for meals. Kathy could never remember how it started, but the sister was elderly, and liked Kathy’s cooking, so around dinnertime, Kathy always had a plate ready for her. It went on for months, and it warmed Kathy to know someone would go to the trouble to eat what she’d made.
“Hello!” Zeitoun called out, and paddled over.
“You think you could help us get out of here?” Alvin asked.
The pastor and Beulah had waited out the storm but had now exhausted their supply of food and water. Zeitoun had never seen them look so weary.
“It’s time to go,” Alvin said.
* * *
Given the rain and the wind, it was impossible to try to evacuate them in the canoe. Zeitoun told them he would find help.
He paddled up Claiborne, the wind and rain fighting him, to the Memorial Medical Center, where he knew there were police and National Guard soldiers stationed. As he approached, he saw soldiers in the alleyway, on the roof, on the ramps and balconies. It looked like a heavily fortified military base. When he got close enough to see the faces of the soldiers, two of them raised their guns.
“Don’t come any closer!” they ordered.
Zeitoun slowed his canoe. The wind picked up. It was impossible to stay in one place, and making himself heard was difficult.
“I’m just looking for help,” Zeitoun yelled.
One of the soldiers lowered his gun. The other kept his trained on Zeitoun.
“We can’t help you,” he said. “Go to St. Charles.”
Zeitoun assumed the soldier hadn’t heard him correctly. The wind was turning his canoe around, veiling his words. “There’s an old couple down the road that needs to be evacuated,” he clarified, louder this time.
“Not our problem,” the soldier said. “Go to St. Charles.”
Now both guns were lowered.
“Why not call somebody?” Zeitoun asked. Did the soldier really mean that Zeitoun should paddle all the way to the intersection of Napoleon and St. Charles when the soldier could simply call another unit on his walkie-talkie? What were they doing in the city, if not helping evacuate people?
“We can’t call nobody,” the other soldier said.
“How come?” Zeitoun asked. “With all this technology, you can’t call someone?”
Now the soldier, only a few years older than Zeitoun’s son Zachary, seemed afraid. He had no answer, and seemed unsure of what to do next. Finally he turned and walked away. The remaining soldiers stared at Zeitoun, holding their M-16s.
Zeitoun turned his canoe around.
He paddled to the intersection of Napoleon and St. Charles, his shoulders aching. The wind was making the work twice as difficult. The water grew shallow as he approached the intersection. He saw tents there, and military vehicles, and a dozen or so police officers and soldiers. He stepped out of his canoe and walked up to a man, a soldier of some kind, standing on the grassy median—New Orleanians called it the neutral ground.
“I have a situation,” Zeitoun said. “I have a handicapped man who needs help, medical attention. He needs help now.”
“Okay, we’ll take care of it,” the man said.
“Do you want the address?” Zeitoun asked.
“Yeah, sure, give me that,” the man said, opening a small notebook.
Zeitoun gave him the exact address.
The man wrote it down and put his notebook back in his pocket.
“So you’ll go?” Zeitoun asked.
“Yup,” the man said.
“When?” Zeitoun asked.
“About an hour,” the man said.
“It’s okay. They’re on their way,” Zeitoun said. “They said one hour.”
The pastor and his wife thanked Zeitoun and he returned to the Claiborne house. He picked up Nasser, and they set out to see what they could do. It was just after one o’clock.
A thousand miles away, Yuko’s husband Ahmaad was driving the Odyssey. Kathy was resting and the kids were in the back as they barreled through New Mexico. Ahmaad had been at the wheel for seven hours without a break. At this pace, they would make it to Phoenix by Saturday afternoon.
Ahmaad discouraged Kathy from listening to any news on the radio, but even on the rock and country stations snippets of information were leaking through: President Bush was visiting New Orleans that day, and had just lamented the loss of Trent Lott’s summer home in coastal Mississippi. Heavily armed National Guardsmen had just entered the Convention Center, and though they had been led to believe their entry would be met with something like guerilla warfare, they had found no resistance whatsoever—only exhausted and hungry people who wanted to leave the city. Kathy took comfort in this, thinking that perhaps the city was coming under control. The military presence, one commentator was saying, “would soon be overwhelming.”
Making their rounds, Zeitoun and Nasser found an abandoned military jeep and in it, a box of meals, ready-to-eat—MREs. Shortly after, they encountered a family of five on an overpass, and gave them some water and the box of MREs. It was a tidy coincidence. Zeitoun didn’t like to carry anything of value at all, and welcomed any opportunity to unload anything he’d found.
It was about five o’clock, the sky darkening, when Zeitoun and Nasser made their way back to the Claiborne house.
Zeitoun was sure that the pastor and his wife would have been rescued by that point, but just to be certain, he and Nasser made a detour and paddled over to Robert Street.
Alvin and Beulah were still there, on the porch, their bags still ready, a light rain still falling on them. They had been waiting for four hours.
Zeitoun was furious. He felt helpless, betrayed. He’d made a promise to the pastor and his wife, and because he had been lied to, his promise had not been kept.
He apologized to the couple, explaining that he had first tried the hospital, where he was sent away at gunpoint, and then gone to St. Charles to tell the soldiers and the relief workers about their plight. The pastor expressed confidence that help was still on its way, but Zeitoun
didn’t want to take any chances.
“I’ll figure something out,” he said.
When he and Nasser returned to the Claiborne house, they saw a small motorboat tied to the front porch. Inside the house, they found Todd Gambino sitting inside with a new dog. With the boat—which Todd had seen floating under a ruined garage and figured he would put to use—he’d been making his own rounds around the city, plucking people from porches and rooftops and bringing them to the overpasses and other points of rescue. He’d even found this dog, which was now happily eating food at Todd’s feet, on a roof and had taken him in.
Again Zeitoun felt the presence of some divine hand. The Williamses needed help immediately, help he had not been able to provide, and here was Todd, with precisely the vehicle they needed, at precisely the right moment.
Todd did not hesitate. Zeitoun agreed to care for the dog while he was gone, and Todd was off. He picked up Alvin and Beulah, cradling them one by one into the motorboat. Then he sped off toward the staging ground at Napoleon and St. Charles.
The mission took all of twenty minutes. Soon Todd was back, drinking a beer and relaxing again on the porch, his hand stroking the rescued dog’s matted fur.
“Some things you just have to do yourself,” he said with a smile.
Zeitoun had known Todd to be a good tenant, but he didn’t know this side of him. They talked for a time on the porch, and Todd told him stories of his own rescues—how he’d picked up dozens of people already, how he’d been shuttling them to hospitals and staging grounds, how easy it was with a motorboat. Todd had always been, to Zeitoun’s mind, a bit of a wanderer, something of a playboy. He liked to have a good time, didn’t want to be too tied down with rules and responsibilities. He smoked, he drank, he kept irregular hours. But here he was, his eyes alight, talking about carrying people to safety, how his arrival at any given house or overpass was met with cheers and thanks. A time like this could change a man, Zeitoun knew, and he was happy to see it happening here and now to Todd: a good man made better.