Zeitoun (17 page)

Ahmad called his younger brother and told him he’d be shipping out in a few weeks’ time. Zeitoun was speechless. He kissed the phone. He kissed his mother and sisters. And when the time came, he gathered a sackful of things and met Ahmad in Greece.

On his first voyage, he was a deckhand, the youngest man onboard. The other crew members hailed from everywhere—South Africa, Turkey, Nigeria—and welcomed him warmly. Zeitoun was convinced Ahmad was treating him a bit more roughly than the others, to compensate for any suspicions of nepotism, but he didn’t mind. He washed and painted and hauled. He did the jobs no one wanted to do.

They sailed from Piraeus to Naxos and back, and Zeitoun was in love with it all. He let his hair grow, he spent his free time on deck, looking out, watching the water come at the ship and disappear behind it. Though the schedule was grueling, four hours on and four off, all day and night, he didn’t mind. He didn’t need to sleep, not yet.

He had not known until then how badly he had needed this kind of freedom. He felt twice as strong, three times as tall. And finally Zeitoun knew Ahmad’s secret, why he had become a sailor, why he had risked so much to become a captain. As they passed on deck or on their way to their different quarters, Zeitoun and Ahmad shared knowing glances, sheepish smiles. Only now did Zeitoun know liberation, and it was everything. Ahmad could see that his younger brother would not be returning to Jableh any time soon.

Their lives were at sea, together and apart, as they passed from their
twenties to their early thirties. There were cargo ships, passenger ships, combinations of both. They brought Nebraskan wheat to Tokyo, Brazilian bananas to London, American scrap metal to India. They brought Romanian cement to Nigeria, and always in Nigeria there were stowaways; every time they left Lagos they could count on finding two or three men hiding, and always they made the same arrangement: earn your keep onboard, and when we reach the next port you’re on your own.

Jobs on general cargo ships were prized most; they usually spent a week or two at port, giving the crew plenty of time to investigate the area. Zeitoun explored dozens of cities, always docking with a pocketful of money and no obligations to anyone. He would rent a car, devour the surrounding towns, explore the coast, visit famed mosques, meet women who would beg him to stay.

But he was a serious young man, perhaps too serious at times. It was no secret that seamen liked to play cards and enjoy a drink or two. Zeitoun didn’t gamble and had never had a drop of alcohol, so when his own shifts were over, he went back to work, helping whoever needed it. And when there wasn’t work to do, while his crewmates got stoned and took each other’s money playing cards, he found a different diversion: he would go to the small pool onboard the ship and tie a rope around his waist. He would tie the other end to the wall, and then he would swim—three hours at a stretch, strengthening his arms and back, testing himself. He was always testing himself, seeing how much his body could do.

In the end, Zeitoun spent ten years as a sailor. Aboard a ship called the
Star Castor
he saw the Persian Gulf, Japan, Australia, and Baltimore. Aboard the
Capitan Elias
, he saw Holland and Norway. He saw herds of humpbacks, breaching grey whales, schools of dolphins leading the ships to port. He saw the aurora borealis, meteor showers over tumbling black
waves, night skies so clear the stars seemed within reach, hung from a ceiling by fishing wire. He served on the
Nitsa
, the
Andromeda
, he sailed all the way until 1988, when he landed in Houston and decided to explore inland. That brought him to Baton Rouge, and Baton Rouge brought him to Kathy, and Kathy brought him Zachary and Nademah and Safiya and Aisha.

Zeitoun prayed on the floor in his house, and then lay down on Nademah’s bed, wondering where his wife and children were this night, if they had made it to Phoenix yet, thanking God that they were safe, that he was safe, that they would see each other soon.

In the morning Zeitoun rose with the sun, prayed, and then checked the freezer. There wasn’t much left, and what was left was thawing. It would be rotten by the following day. He figured it had to be eaten immediately, so he removed some hamburger for the dogs and figured he’d barbecue the rest that night. He’d invite Todd and Nasser and anyone else he could find. They’d cook all the meat that remained, and have some grim semblance of a party on his roof.

He paddled across the street to feed the dogs.

“How are you boys today?” he asked the first two.

They whimpered, and ate, and licked his legs. He was amused by how grateful, how surprised, they were every day.

“Have a little faith,” he said.

He climbed across the rickety board to the second pair of dogs. They whined as he climbed through the window.

“What’re you so worried about?” he asked them. “Every day I come, same time. Don’t worry.”

Yuko’s husband Ahmaad had driven through the night, stopping only once, and they finally arrived in Arizona midday on Saturday. They were both too dazed, too wired to sleep, and that first day at Yuko and Ahmaad’s house was full of welcome distraction. Yuko and Ahmaad’s five children loved the Zeitoun kids, and they loved their Aunt Kathy, particularly the boys. She was one of them, effortlessly so, and they treated her like a peer. They played video games and watched TV, and Kathy tried not to think about what had become of their home, where Zeitoun might be at that moment.

Zeitoun still feared getting near his office on Dublin—the armed men were likely still nearby—so he and Nasser had no set itinerary this day. They decided to do a thorough check of Uptown, to see if any neighbors were left, if any help was needed.

Paddling south on Octavia Street, Zeitoun noted that with the strength of two, and without rain or wind, they were fast. They sped past homes, over cars, around debris.

Zeitoun had worked on a dozen or so homes on this street, and knew he would return when the waters fell away. With every passing day, the standing water went deeper into the homes, made it less likely anything within would be salvageable.

Nasser saw the helicopter first.

The helicopters were everywhere, but didn’t usually hover so low for so long, and rarely in such a densely built neighborhood. Zeitoun could see this one through the trees and over the roofs long before he could
see the water below it. Zeitoun and Nasser paddled toward it to find out what was going on. As they got closer, they saw a dark smudge in the water, a log or piece of debris. They continued paddling, now feeling the wind from the rotors, the ripples radiating outward.

The object in the water looked like a tire, shiny and bulbous—

It was a body. They were sure now. It had turned, and now the head was visible. It was a man of average size, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, half-submerged, face-down.

Zeitoun looked up to the helicopter. Was it a rescue in progress? He looked closer. No. A man was pointing a camera at the body. He did so for a few more minutes and then the helicopter rose, tilted, and drifted off.

Zeitoun and Nasser maintained their distance. Zeitoun knew too many people in this neighborhood. If this was a neighbor or friend, he didn’t want to see him this way.

Rattled, they paddled silently to the Claiborne house. Zeitoun had never imagined that the day would come that he might see such a thing, a body floating in filthy water, less than a mile from his home. He could not find a place for the sight in the categories of his mind. The image was from another time, a radically different world. It brought to mind photographs of war, bodies decaying on forgotten battlefields.
Who was that man?
Zeitoun thought.
Could we have saved him?
Zeitoun could only think that perhaps the body had traveled far, that the man had been swept from closer to the lake all the way to Uptown. Nothing else seemed to make sense. He did not want to contemplate the possibility that the man had needed help and had not gotten it.

When Zeitoun tied the canoe to the Claiborne porch, the phone was ringing. He picked it up and found his brother Ahmad.

“I wish you would leave,” Ahmad said.

“I’m fine. Safer every day,” Zeitoun said. He had no plans to tell Ahmad about the body.

“My kids are worried about you.” Ahmad’s son Lutfi and daughter Laila had been watching CNN since the storm. They saw the images of devastation and desperation, and could not believe that their uncle was living amid all that.

“Tell them not to worry,” Zeitoun said. “And hello from me.”

Zeitoun was grateful for his brother’s constant concern. The Zeitoun siblings were all close-knit, but no one worried more, and spent more time collecting and updating addresses and phone numbers and photos, than Ahmad. Perhaps it was because he felt disconnected from them, living in Spain, but in any case he liked to know where his siblings were, what they were doing. And he focused on Abdulrahman in particular, so much so that one day, a few years before, Ahmad had called in the middle of the day in New Orleans and made a very strange proposal.

“What are you doing today?” he’d asked.

It was a Saturday, and Zeitoun was about to go to the lake with Kathy and the kids.

“Do you know the corner of Bourbon and St. Peter?”

Zeitoun said he did.

“I have an idea,” Ahmad began, and then explained that he had found a website where he could tap into a live webcam at that corner. If Zeitoun went there, Ahmad could watch him, in real time, while sitting at his computer in Spain.

“You up for it?” Ahmad asked.

“Sure,” Zeitoun said. “Why not?”

Zeitoun packed the kids up in the van, drove the few miles to the
French Quarter, and looked for the corner of St. Peter and Bourbon. Once there, he searched for the camera. He didn’t find it, but figured he should at least stand there for a while. He and the kids stood on every corner, in fact, just in case. And when he got home, he called Ahmad, who was just about leaping through the phone.

“I saw you!” he said. “I saw you all! Next to the hot-dog stand!”

He had watched them for five minutes, grinning the whole time. He had made a screen capture and emailed it.

When he saw it, Zeitoun laughed, amazed. There he was, with all four kids. Nademah was just below the streetlight, Zachary was holding Safiya, and Zeitoun was holding Aisha. Ahmad, technophile and deeply protective brother, was, in very real ways, watching over Zeitoun at all times.

On the roof that night, Zeitoun and Todd and Nasser barbecued
the remaining meat, noting that it was the first time any of them had been at any sort of social event since the storm. The conversation was awkward, and the humor had a dark edge to it. They talked about FEMA, about the Superdome and the Convention Center. They had been hearing isolated reports from the radio and others who had stayed in the city, and they were all relieved they had eschewed shelter there; they had known it would turn out poorly. None among them could live caged like that.

They talked about what the city would look like when the water was gone. There would be trees and trash everywhere—the ground would look like that of a dredged lake. The roads would be impassable for cars and bikes, for almost any kind of vehicle.

“A horse could do it,” Zeitoun said. “We’ll get some horses. Easy.”

Everyone laughed.

As the sky blackened, Zeitoun saw an orange light through the trees, less than a mile away. Soon all three men were watching the light grow, the flames twisting higher. Zeitoun was sure it had engulfed two or three buildings at least. Then he looked closer, realizing that the fire was very close to—

“My office,” he said.

There was paint there, hundreds of gallons. Paint thinner, lumber. So many toxic and flammable things.

“We have to go,” he said.

Zeitoun and Todd climbed down the side of the house and into Todd’s motorboat. They sped toward the fire until they could see the flames blooming white and orange between buildings and over treetops. When they got close, they saw that the fire encompassed an entire block. There were five houses alight, the flames grasping for a sixth. They had
no tools to stanch a fire, and no plan at all for what they might do to put out a chemical inferno.

Zeitoun’s office was unharmed, but it was no more than twenty feet from the fire. They tested the winds. It was a still night, with heavy humidity. There was no predicting where the fire would go, but it was certain that nothing could stop its course. There was a fire station four blocks away, but it was empty and flooded; there were no firefighters in sight. And with the phones down, with 911 inoperative, there was virtually no way to alert anyone. They could only watch.

Zeitoun and Todd sat in their boat, the heat of the fire pulsing at them. The smell was musky, acrid, and the flames swallowed the homes with remarkable speed. One was an old Victorian Zeitoun had always admired, and a few doors down was a house he had considered buying when it had been on the market a few years earlier. Both homes were devoured in a minute. The pieces disappeared into the dark water, leaving nothing.