Review: 'Zeitoun' by Dave Eggers

He doesn't know we're a thing, but I fell in love with Dave Eggers when I was in college and when he was publishing Might magazine. Sure, the writer/publisher with tongue firmly in cheek and in full lit-slacker (whatever that is) mode was still a thousand times more ambitious than me. I stuck with Eggers and his McSweeney's publishing house after Might folded. Who would have thought, 10 years later, he'd be riveting us with increasingly heartbreaking and powerful stories about some of the most current and saddest tragedies on the planet?

I'm glad he is. Better yet, he's trying to make sense of these events. He's getting involved, he's trying to get readers active, and generally trying to do something to make things right. The guy has a heart, and it's admirable that he's done so well to meld excellent storytelling with journalism and advocacy.

In 2006 Eggers tackled the topic of Darfur, putting us in the middle of Africa and making us feel what it was like to walk in Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng's … well, Deng didn't have any shoes. But the epic What Is the What seemed to set the bar for a new kind of autobiography and certainly was Eggers' finest work. The book is about Deng, but Eggers explained to readers that he took various liberties to tell a good story. He also pumped proceeds from the book into the newly created Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, which provides educational opportunities for kids in Sudan and refugees in America.

Eggers has done a similar thing with his latest book, Zeitoun. While What Is the What made us visualize something unfamiliar and far away, Zeitoun takes us to New Orleans and into the eye of Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane just happened. Here. Barely five years ago. The images are seared in our minds and the city still struggles to rebuild.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun, the Syrian immigrant and prolific New Orleans contractor the book follows, is now helping to rebuild his city and is also rebuilding his life after Katrina. Zeitoun tells his and his family's story of surviving and separating during the storm, his participation in its aftermath and the horrendous events that followed in a city that had spun into chaos.

Zeitoun goes from survivor to savior to prisoner. Without giving away too many details (most all of them have already been documented or reported in some form or another), with each page the reader feels the little victories won by Zeitoun as he navigates his canoe through the city to feed another dog or help another lady out of a window.

We also feel the depths of his misery and incredible disappointment with the United States, as the law goes awry and human rights disappear like the city under the flood. Zeitoun is separated from his wife, Kathy, and their kids, and is imprisoned in a Guantanamo-like camp for doing nothing wrong. His only "crime" was to have stayed put during the city's evacuation — a decision the family wrestles with today. A devout Muslim, Zeitoun knows that no matter how brutal, it was all part of God's plan.

Near the end of the book, Eggers writes that Kathy "finds herself wondering, early in the morning and late at night and sometimes just while sitting ... Did all that really happen? Did it happen in the United States? To us? It could have been avoided, she thinks. So many little things could have been done. So many people let it happen. So many looked away. And it only takes one person, one small act of stepping from the dark to the light."

While sympathetic to Zeitoun's plight and shining light on this post-Katrina nightmare, Eggers goes the extra mile to get both sides of the story. Interviews with the police who arrested Zeitoun and a trip to the prison in which Zeitoun was held round out our understanding of just how desperate things were. Eggers' extra reporting isn't designed to excuse the lawlessness, but to teach a lesson so this never happens again. In our post-9/11 reality, it's unfortunately easy to see how it still could.

Like he did with What and Deng, Eggers has helped establish the Zeitoun Foundation, geared at rebuilding New Orleans and "to help ensure the human rights of all Americans." An animated movie directed by Jonathan Demme is reportedly in the works. Before you see the film or even if you don't, do yourself and the country a favor: Read this book.

Book jacket image courtesy of McSweeneys.net.