He paddled only a few blocks before he began to have second thoughts. There were power lines down everywhere. What would exposed lines do if they made contact with his aluminum canoe? Besides, there wasn’t enough water to paddle much. In some parts of the neighborhood, there was scarcely any water at all—only a few inches. He ran aground, got out, turned the canoe around, and paddled back home.
Throughout the afternoon, the water fled from the streets, a few inches an hour. The drainage system was working. By that evening, the water had receded completely. The streets were dry. The damage was extensive, but really no worse than a handful of other storms he could remember. And it was over.
He called Kathy.
“Come back,” he said.
Kathy was tempted, but it was already seven o’clock, they were about to eat dinner, and she knew she wasn’t about to drive through the night again with four kids and a flatulent dog. Besides, there was no power in New Orleans, so they would be returning to the same situation they were suffering through in Baton Rouge. The kids were still enjoying the time spent with their cousins—the laughter rattling the house was testament to it.
She and Zeitoun agreed to talk about it again in the morning, though they both expected Kathy to be packing up the kids sometime the next day.
She went inside and the combined families, three adults and eight kids, ate hot dogs by candlelight. That her sisters had put pork on the table did not go unnoticed, but Kathy vowed not to make an issue of it. Better to let it go, she said to herself. Let it go, let it go. She had so many battles to fight. There would be so many more in the coming days, she was sure, that she couldn’t expend her energy on her sisters, on hot dogs. If they wanted to serve her children pork, they could try.
* * *
Later, when Kathy went to the car to steal a few moments with the radio, she heard Mayor Nagin echoing her reluctance to return. Don’t come back yet, he said. Wait to see what the damage is, until everything is settled and cleaned up. Give it a day or two.
In the afternoon, Zeitoun got a call from Adnan, a second cousin on Zeitoun’s mother’s side. Adnan had done well since emigrating over a decade earlier; he owned and managed four Subway franchises in New Orleans. His wife Abeer was six months pregnant with their first child.
“You still in the city?” he asked, assuming Zeitoun was.
“Of course I am. You in Baton Rouge?” Zeitoun asked.
“I am.” Adnan had driven up the night before with Abeer and his elderly parents. “How is it there?”
“Windy,” Zeitoun said. “Really? It’s a little scary.” He would never have admitted this to Kathy, but he could confide in Adnan.
“You think you’ll stay?” Adnan asked.
Zeitoun said he planned to, and offered to look after Adnan’s shops. Before Adnan had left the city, he’d emptied the cash register at the City Park Avenue location and made sure bread was baked; he’d assumed he’d be back on Tuesday.
“You know any mosques in Baton Rouge?” Adnan asked. All the motels were booked, and he and Abeer knew no one in Baton Rouge. They’d been able to place Adnan’s parents in a mosque the previous night, but there were already hundreds of people there, sleeping on the floors, and they couldn’t accommodate more. Adnan and Abeer had spent the night in their car.
“I don’t,” Zeitoun said. “But call Kathy. She’s with family. They’ll take you in, I’m sure.” He gave Adnan her cell phone number.
Zeitoun emptied all of the buckets in the house, put them under the holes in the roof again, and got ready for bed. It was warm outside, stifling inside. He lay in the dark. He thought about the strength of the storm, its duration, how oddly minimal the damage had been to this house. He went to the front window. Already, at eight o’clock, the streets were dry as bone. All that effort to flee, and for what? Hundreds of thousands of people rushing north for this. A few inches of water, all of it now gone.
It was quiet that night. He heard no wind, no voices, no sirens. There was only the sound of a city breathing as he breathed, weary from the fight, grateful it was over.
TUESDAY AUGUST 30
Zeitoun woke up late again. He squinted at the window above, saw the same grey sky, heard the same strange quiet. He had never known a time like this. He couldn’t drive anywhere, couldn’t work. For the first time in decades, there was nothing to do. It would be a day of calm, of rest. He felt strangely lethargic, ethereally content. He fell back into a shallow sleep.
Arwad Island, his family’s ancestral home, was soaked in light. The sun was constant there, a warm white light that bleached the stone buildings and cobblestone alleys, that brought incredible clarity to the surrounding cobalt sea.
When Zeitoun dreamt of Arwad, it was the Arwad he visited during the summers of his boyhood, and in these dreams he was doing boyish things: sprinting around the island’s tiny perimeter, scaring seagulls to flight, searching in the tide pools for crabs and shells or whatever oddities had been thrown onto the island’s rocky shore.
By the outer wall, facing the western expanse of the sea, he and Ahmad chased a lone chicken through the ruins around the outermost homes. The scrawny bird raced up a pile of garbage and rubble and into a cave of coral and masonry. They turned at the sound of a frigate dropping anchor, waiting to land at Tartus, the port city a mile east. There were always a half-dozen ships, tankers, and freighters waiting for a berth at the busy port, and often they would anchor close enough to cast a shadow over the tiny island. Abdulrahman and Ahmad would stare up at them, the hulls rising twenty, thirty feet over the sea. The boys would wave to the crew and dream of being aboard. It seemed a life of impossible romance and freedom.
Even then, when Ahmad was a skinny, tanned boy of fifteen, he knew he would be a sailor. He was careful not to tell his father, but he was certain he wanted to steer one of those ships. He wanted to guide great vessels around the world, to speak a dozen languages, to know the people of every nation.
Abdulrahman never doubted that Ahmad would do this. Ahmad was, in Abdulrahman’s eyes, capable of anything. He was his best friend, his hero and teacher. Ahmad taught him how to spear a fish, how to row a boat alone, how to dive from the great Phoenician stones on the island’s southern wall. He would have followed Ahmad anywhere, and often did.
The boys stripped to their underwear and set out for a narrow archipelago of rocks. Abdulrahman and Ahmad found the spear they kept hidden in the stones and took turns diving for fish. Swimming came naturally to the boys of the Zeitoun family, and to all the children of Arwad. They could swim as soon as they could walk and would stay in the water, swimming and treading, for hours. When Ahmad and Abdulrahman emerged they would lay on a low stone wall, the sea on one side and the town’s outer promenade on the other.
The promenade wasn’t much to look at, a wide, crumbling paved area, dotted with litter, evidence of the island’s half-hearted attempts to attract tourists. Most of the residents of Arwad didn’t much care if visitors came or not. It was home, and a place where real industry happened: fish were caught, cleaned, and brought to the mainland, and ships, strong wooden sailboats of one or two or three masts, were built using methods perfected on the island centuries before.
Arwad had been a strategic military possession for an endless succession of sea powers: the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the Achaemenid Persians, the Greeks under Alexander, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Mongols, the Turks, the French, and the British. Various walls and battlements, in pieces and all but gone, spoke of past fortresses. Two small castles, scarcely altered since the Middle Ages, stood in the center of the island and could be explored by curious children. Abdulrahman and Ahmad often ran up the smooth stone stairs of the lookout tower by their home, pretending they were spotting invaders, sounding bells of warning, planning their defenses.
But usually their games took place in the water. They were never more than a few steps from the cool Mediterranean, and Abdulrahman would follow Ahmad to the shore and up the great Phoenicia
n stones of the wall. From the top they could see into the windows of the higher-sitting dwellings of the town. Then they would turn to the sea and dive. After swimming, they would lay on the stone wall, the surface polished by the crashing waves and the feet of uncountable children. They warmed themselves with the heat of the rocks and the sun above. They would talk of heroes who had defended the island, of armies and saints who had stopped there. And they would talk of their plans, their own great deeds and explorations.
Soon the two of them would grow quiet, near sleep, hearing the waves push against the island’s outer walls, the ceaseless shushing of the sea. But in Zeitoun’s half-dream, the sound of the ocean seemed wrong. It was both quieter and less rhythmic—not an ebb and flow, but instead the constant whisper of a river.
The dissonance woke him.
II
TUESDAY AUGUST 30
Zeitoun opened his eyes again. He was home, in his daughter Nademah’s room, under her covers, looking through the window at a dirty white sky. The sound continued, something like running water. But there was no rain, no leaks. He thought a pipe might have broken, but that couldn’t be it; the sound wasn’t right. This was more like a river, the movement of great volumes of water.
He sat up and looked down through the window that faced the backyard. He saw water, a wide sea of it. It was coming from the north. It flowed into the yard, under the house, rising quickly.
He couldn’t make sense of it. The day before, the water had receded, as he had expected it to, but now it had returned, far stronger. And this water was different from the murky rainwater of the day before. This water was green and clear. This was lake water.
At that moment, Zeitoun knew that the levees had been overtopped or compromised. There could be no doubt. The city would soon be underwater. If the water was here, he knew, it was already covering most of New Orleans. He knew it would keep coming, would likely rise eight feet or more in his neighborhood, and more elsewhere. He knew the recovery would take months or years. He knew the flood had come.
He called Kathy.
“The water’s coming,” he said.
“What? No, no,” she said. “Levees broke?”
“I think so.”
“I can’t believe it.”
He heard her stifle a sob.
“I better go,” he said.
He hung up and went to work.
Elevate, he thought. Elevate, elevate. Everything had to be brought to the second floor. He recalled the worst of the predictions before the storm: if the levees broke, there would be ten, fifteen feet of water in some places. Methodically, he began to prepare. Everything of value had to be brought higher. The work was simply work, and he went about it calmly and quickly.
He took the TV, the DVD player, the stereo, all the electronics upstairs. He gathered all the kids’ games and books and encyclopedias and carried those up next.
Things were tense at the house in Baton Rouge. With the weather windy and grey, and so many people sharing a small house, tempers were flaring. Kathy thought it best to make her family scarce. She and her kids put away their sleeping bags and pillows and left in the Odyssey, intending to drive around most of the day, going to malls or restaurants—anything to kill time. They would return late, after dinner, only to sleep. She prayed that they could return to New Orleans the next day.
Kathy called Zeitoun from the road.
“My jewelry box!” she said.
He found that, and the good china, and he brought it all upstairs. He emptied the refrigerator; he left the freezer full. He put all the chairs on top of the dining room table. Unable to carry a heavy chest, he put it on a mattress and dragged it up the stairs. He placed one couch on top of another, sacrificing one to save the other. Then he got more books. He saved all the books.
Kathy called again. “I told you not to cancel the property insurance,” she said.
She was right. Just three weeks before, he had chosen not to renew the part of their flood insurance that covered their furniture, everything in the house. He hadn’t wanted to spend the money. He admitted she was right, and knew she would remind him of it for years to come.
“Can we talk about it later?” he asked.
Zeitoun went outside, the air humid and gusty. He tied the canoe to the back porch. The water was whispering through the cracks in the back fence, rising up. It was flowing into his yard at an astonishing rate. As he stood, it swallowed his ankles and crawled up his shins.
Back inside, he continued to move everything of value upward. As he did, he watched the water erase the floor and climb the walls. In another hour there was three feet of water indoors. And his house was three feet above street level.
But the water was clean. It was translucent, almost green in tint. He watched it fill his dining room, momentarily struck by the beauty of the sight. It brought forth a vague memory of a storm on Arwad Island, when he was just a boy, when the Mediterranean rose up and swallowed the lower-sitting homes, the blue-green sea sitting inside living rooms and bedrooms and kitchens. The water breached and dodged the Phoenician stones surrounding the island without any difficulty at all.
At that moment, Zeitoun had an idea. He knew the fish in his tank wouldn’t survive without filtration or food, so he reached inside and liberated them. He dropped them in the water that filled the house. It was the best chance they had. They swam down and away.
Using his cell phone, he talked to Kathy throughout the day. They reviewed what couldn’t be saved, the furniture too large to carry upstairs. There were dressers, armoires. He removed all the drawers he could, carried upstairs everything that could be removed and lifted.
The water devoured the cabinets and windows. Zeitoun watched, dismayed, as it rose four, five, six feet in the house—above the electrical box, the phone box. He would have no access to electricity or a landline for weeks.
By nightfall the neighborhood was under nine feet of water and Zeitoun could no longer go downstairs. He was spent; he had done all he could. He lay on Nademah’s bed on the second floor and called Kathy. She was driving around with the kids, dreading a return to the house in Baton Rouge.
“I saved all I could,” he said.
“I’m glad you were there,” she said, and meant it. If he hadn’t been at home they would have lost everything.
They talked about what would become of the house, of the city. They knew the house would have to be gutted, all the insulation and wiring replaced, the plaster and Sheetrock and paint and wallpaper. Everything, down to the studs, was gone. And if there was this much water Uptown, there was more in other neighborhoods. He thought of them—the houses near the lake and the houses near the levees. They didn’t stand a chance.
As they talked, Zeitoun realized his phone was dying. Without electricity, they both knew, when his battery was gone there would be no reliable way to call out.
“Better go,” he said.
“Please leave,” she said. “Tomorrow.”
“No, no,” he said, but even as he spoke, he was reconsidering. He had not anticipated being confined to this house for long. He knew there was enough food for a week or more, but now the situation would present a greater strain than he had planned.
“Tell the kids I said goodnight,” he said.
She said she would.
He turned off his phone to conserve what power it had left.
Kathy was still driving. She’d exhausted all means of diversion and was about to go back to her brother’s house when her phone rang again. It was Adnan. He was in Baton Rouge with his wife Abeer, he said, and they had no place to stay.
“Where’d you stay last night?” Kathy asked.
“In the car,” he said, sounding apologetic and ashamed.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Let me see what I can do.”
She planned to ask Mary Ann and Patty once she got back to the house. It would be crowded, but there was no way a pregnant woman should be sleeping in a car when there was enough room at her family’s
house.
* * *
When Kathy returned to Andy’s, it was ten o’clock and the rooms were dark. All the kids, save Nademah, were asleep in the car. She roused them and walked quietly into the house. After the kids were settled in their sleeping bags, Mary Ann appeared and confronted her.
“Where were you all day?”
“Out,” Kathy said. “Trying to stay out of the way.”
“Do you know how expensive gas is?” Mary Ann said.
“Excuse me?” Kathy said. “I didn’t know you were paying for my gas.”
Kathy was exasperated, defeated. In the house, they were made to feel burdensome; now she was being scolded for leaving. She vowed to herself to get through the night and think of a new plan the next day. Maybe she could drive to Phoenix to stay with Yuko. It was a ludicrous idea, to travel fifteen hundred miles when her blood relatives lived fifty miles from New Orleans, but she’d run to Yuko’s house before and could do so again.
The tension was bad enough already, but for Adnan and Abeer’s sake, Kathy had to ask. After all, Mary Ann knew them; she’d met Adnan and Abeer many times. Couldn’t they stay for one night?
“Absolutely not,” Mary Ann said.
On the dark second floor, Zeitoun held a flashlight between his teeth, sifting through the pile of belongings he’d salvaged. He shelved the books he could. He boxed the certificates and pictures. He found pictures of his children when they were smaller, pictures from a vacation they’d all taken to Spain, pictures from their trip to Syria. He organized them, found a plastic bag, put them safely inside and then re-boxed them.
In another, older box he came upon another photo, sepia-toned and in a rickety frame, and paused. He hadn’t seen it in years. He and his brother Luay and sister Zakiya were playing with their brother Mohammed, eighteen years older. They were all wrestling with him in the bedroom Zeitoun and Ahmad and all the younger boys had shared in Jableh. There little Abdulrahman was, on the far right, maybe five years old, his tiny fingers swallowed by Mohammed’s huge hand.