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.
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 6
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 bro
ther 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.
III
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 7
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.
She called the Claiborne house again. No answer.
Yuko tried to put it in context. It was miraculous that the phone line at the Claiborne house was working at all. Chances were that it finally gave way and died. He’ll find a way to call, she said. He’s in an underwater city, she said. Cut the man some slack.
Kathy was calmer now, but still she paced the living room.
Yuko took the kids to the mall. She didn’t want to leave Kathy alone, but the pacing was worrying the kids. Yuko was sure Zeitoun would call while they were gone, so why not let the kids enjoy themselves? The mall had a food court, an arcade for Zach. They planned to be back at three.
Kathy called the Claiborne house again. No answer.
Walt called. “You hear anything from Zeitoun?”
Kathy told him she hadn’t.
She called Adnan, Zeitoun’s cousin.
“I’m still ashamed,” she said. Last they had spoken, Kathy had had to tell him that her sister would not allow Adnan and Abeer to stay with them. It had been painful.
“Don’t worry. We’re fine,” he said.
He was still in Baton Rouge with Abeer and his parents. After spending two nights in their car, they had returned to the mosque, and had been sleeping on the floor there for the past week.
“How is Abdulrahman?” he asked.
“I haven’t heard from him. Have you?”
Adnan had not.
Alone and seeking distraction, Kathy turned on the TV, avoiding the news, finding Oprah Winfrey. Or she thought it was Oprah’s show. But soon she realized it was a news report replaying portions of the previous day’s show, with New Orleans police chief Eddie Compass and Mayor Nagin as Oprah’s guests.
Compass was lamenting the extent of the crime in the Superdome. “We had babies in there. Little babies getting raped,” he said, weeping. From Mayor Nagin: “About three days we were basically rationing, fighting, people were—that’s why the people, in my opinion, they got to this almost animalistic state, because they didn’t have the resources. They were trapped. You get ready to see something that I’m not sure you’re ready to see. We have people standing out there that have been in that frickin’ Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people. That’s the tragedy. People are trying to give us babies that were dying.”
Kathy turned the TV off again, this time for good. She called the house on Claiborne. The phone rang and rang. She paced. She walked outside, into the assaulting Phoenix heat, then went back inside. She called again. The rings began to sound hollow, desolate.
* * *
Four o’clock arrived and he hadn’t called.
She called Ahmad in Spain. He hadn’t heard from Zeitoun either. He had been calling the Claiborne house all day, to no avail.
In the late afternoon, the kids returned.
“Did Dad call?” Nademah asked.
“Not yet,” Kathy said, “still waiting.”
She held herself together for a few seconds but then imploded. She excused herself and ran to the guest room. She did not want her girls to see her this way.
Yuko came in and sat on the bed with Kathy. It’s been just one day, she said. Just one day in the life of a man in a city with no services. He would call tomorrow. Kathy pulled herself together, and together they prayed. Yuko was right. It was one day. Of course he would call tomorrow.
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 8
Kathy woke up with a better outlook. Maybe her husband didn’t even realize he’d forgotten to call. He was likely saving any number of new people and animals and homes, and in the midst of it all he’d gotten overwhelmed. In any case, Kathy was determined to put on a brave face for the kids. She cooked their breakfast and pretended she was sane and content. She played GameCube with Zachary and killed the morning with diversions.
Periodically she pushed the redial button on Yuko’s phone. The phone at Claiborne rang in an infinite loop.
Noon came and went.
Kathy was losing her grip again.
“I need to go to New Orleans,” she told Yuko.
“No you don’t,” Yuko said. She peppered Kathy with logistical questions. How would she get into the city? Did she plan to buy a boat and dodge the authorities and find her husband on her own? Yuko dismissed the notion.
“We don’t want to have to worry about you, too.”
Ahmad called Kathy. His tone had been neutral the day before, but now he sounded worried. This unnerved Kathy. If Ahmad, made of the same stuff her husband was—and both of them made of the stuff of their father Mahmoud, who could survive two days at sea tethered to a barrel—felt this to be a dire situation, then if anything, Kathy was underreacting.
Ahmad said he would try to contact the TV station that had interviewed Zeitoun. He would contact all the agencies that tracked missing persons in New Orleans. He would contact the Coast Guard. They agreed to call each other as soon they heard something.
Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2005 19:08:04 +0200
To:
[email protected] Subject: Ref. AMER-6G2TNL
Dear Sires,
Many thanks for your answering.
Kindly please do your best to give us any good news about him.
He’s my brother, he leave many years ago in New Orleans:
4649 Dart St. New Orleans
New Orleans, LA
70125-2716
Actually I’m at Spain, but her wife and childrens they left a day before Katrina hit to ARIZONA, his wife: Mrs. Kathy Zeitoun actual contact: 408-[number omitted]
More information:
He remained at home without phone, but he’ve a small boat and he went daily to: Mr. TO
DD at:
5010 S. Claiborne Ave 70125-4941 New Orleans
Last calling was on Sept 6 at 14:30 local time, after that till now no calls, no news. The phone which he used is ringing but no answering. Here I including his pictures maybe can help.
Many thanks.
Sincerely,
Ahmad Zeton
In the afternoon, Zeitoun’s family began calling from Syria. First it was Fahzia. A secondary-school teacher in Jableh, she spoke fluent English.
“Have you heard from Abdulrahman?”
Kathy told her she had not for two days.
There was a long silence on the line.
“You have not heard from Abdulrahman?”
Kathy explained that the phones were down, that it was likely that her husband was just trying to reach a working phone. This did not sit well with Fahzia.
“Again, please—you have not heard from Abdulrahman?”
Kathy loved the Zeitouns of Syria, but she did not need this extra burden. She excused herself and hung up.
Kathy did not attempt to sit at dinner. She paced the rooms, the phone an extension of her arm. She thought through the possibilities—who she knew and what they could do to help. She didn’t know a soul still in the city, she realized. It was paralyzing. It seemed impossible that in 2005, in the United States, there was an entire city cut off from all communication, all contact.
Later, thinking the kids were asleep, she passed one of the bedrooms and heard Aisha talking to one of Yuko’s kids.
“Our house is under ten feet of water,” Aisha said.
Kathy held her breath at the door.
“And we can’t find my dad.”
In the bathroom, Kathy covered her face in a towel and bawled. Her body convulsed, but she tried not to make a sound.
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 9
Kathy had no choice but to lie. She had never told a bald-faced lie to her children before, but now it seemed necessary. Otherwise they would all lose their composure. She planned to enroll them in school on Monday, and to have the strength to be thrown into such a situation they had to believe that their father was healthy and in contact. So at breakfast, when Aisha asked if she had heard from Dad, Kathy did not hesitate.