Zeitoun (24 page)

Nasser was processed next. He was brought to the Amtrak ticket counter, and now Zeitoun saw that they were fingerprinting and photographing each of them.

Soon after Nasser’s interrogation began, his duffel bag created a stir. A female officer was removing stacks of American money from the bag.

“This isn’t from here,” she said.

Nasser argued with her, but this discovery only got the building more excited.

“That
ain’t
from here,” she said, now more certain.

The money was laid out on a nearby table and soon there was a crowd around it. Someone counted it. Ten thousand dollars.

This was the first Zeitoun knew of the contents of Nasser’s bag. When Nasser had brought it into the canoe, Zeitoun had assumed it contained clothes, a few valuables. He never would have guessed it contained $10,000 in cash.

*    *    *

Soon there were more discoveries. Todd had been carrying $2,400 of his own. The officers stacked it on the table in its own pile next to Nasser’s. In Todd’s pockets they found MapQuest printouts.

“I deliver lost luggage,” Todd tried to explain.

This didn’t satisfy the officers.

In one of Todd’s pockets they discovered a small memory chip, the kind used for digital cameras. Todd laughed, explaining that on it were only photos he’d taken of the flood damage. But the authorities were seeing something more.

Watching the evidence on the table mount, Zeitoun’s shoulders slackened. Most municipal systems were not functioning. There were no lawyers in the station, no judges. They would not talk their way out of this. The police and soldiers in the room were too worked up, and the evidence was too intriguing. Zeitoun settled in for a long wait.

Todd grew more exasperated. He would calm down for a time, then explode again. Finally one of the soldiers raised his arm, as if to strike him down with the back of his hand. Todd went quiet.

Then it was Zeitoun’s turn for processing. He was brought to the Amtrak counter and fingerprinted. He was pushed against a nearby wall on which height markers had been written by hand, from five to seven feet. Zeitoun had stood in this exact place before while waiting to buy train tickets for friends or employees. Now, while handcuffed and guarded by two soldiers with M-16s, his photograph was being taken.

At the ticket counter, he surrendered his wallet and was frisked for any other possessions. He was asked basic questions: name, address,
occupation, country of origin. He was not told of the charges against him.

Eventually he was brought back to the row of chairs and was seated again with Todd and Nasser, while Ronnie was processed.

Moments later, Zeitoun was grabbed roughly under the arm. “Stand up,” a soldier said.

Zeitoun stood and was led by three soldiers into a small room—some kind of utility closet. Inside there were bare walls and a small folding table.

The door closed behind him. He was alone with two soldiers.

“Remove your clothes,” one said.

“Here?” he asked.

The soldier nodded.

Until this point, Zeitoun had not been charged with a crime. He had not been read his rights. He did not know why he was being held. Now he was in a small white room being asked by two soldiers, each of them in full camouflage and holding automatic rifles, to remove his clothes.

“Now!” one of the soldiers barked.

Zeitoun took off his T-shirt and shorts and, after a pause, stepped out of his sandals.

“And the undershorts,” the same soldier said.

Zeitoun paused. If he did this, he would live with it always. The shame would never leave him. But there was no alternative. He could refuse, but if he did, there would be a fight. More soldiers. Some sort of retribution.

“Do it!” the soldier ordered.

Zeitoun removed his underwear.

One of the soldiers circled him, lifting Zeitoun’s arms as he passed. The soldier held a baton, and when he reached Zeitoun’s back, he tapped Zeitoun’s inner thigh.

“Spread your legs,” the soldier said.

Zeitoun did so.

“Elbows on the table.”

Zeitoun couldn’t understand the meaning of the words.

The soldier repeated the directive, his voice more agitated. “Put your elbows on the table.”

He had no options. Zeitoun knew that the soldiers would get what they wanted. They were likely looking for any contraband, but he also knew that anything was possible. Nothing on this day had conformed to any precedent.

Zeitoun bent over. He heard the sounds of the soldier pulling plastic gloves onto his hands. Zeitoun felt fingers quickly exploring his rectum. The pain was extreme but brief.

“Stand up,” the soldier said, removing the glove with a snap. “Get dressed.”

Zeitoun put on his shorts and shirt. He was led out of the room, where he saw Todd. He was arguing already, threatening lawsuits, the loss of all their jobs. Soon Todd was pushed into the room, the door was closed, and his protestations were muffled behind the steel door.

When Todd’s search was complete, the two of them were led back through the bus station. Zeitoun was certain that he saw a handful of looks of recognition, soldiers and police officers who knew what had happened in the room.

Zeitoun and Todd were brought to the back of the station and toward the doors that led to the buses and trains. Zeitoun’s thoughts were a jumble. Could it be that after all that, they
were
being evacuated? Perhaps they had been stripped to ensure that they hadn’t stolen anything, and now, deemed clean, they were being sent away on a bus? It was bizarre, but not out of the realm of possibility.

*    *    *

But when the guards pushed open the doors, Zeitoun took a quick breath. The parking lot, where a dozen buses might normally be parked, had been transformed into a vast outdoor prison.

Chain-link fences, topped by razor wire, had been erected into a long, sixteen-foot-high cage extending about a hundred yards into the lot. Above the cage was a roof, a freestanding shelter like those at gas stations. The barbed wire extended to meet it.

Zeitoun and Todd were brought to the front of the cage, a few feet from the back of the bus station, and a different guard opened the door. They were pushed inside. The cage was closed, then locked with chain and a padlock. Down the way, there were two other prisoners, each alone in their own enclosure.

“Holy shit,” Todd said.

Zeitoun was in disbelief. It had been a dizzying series of events—arrested at gunpoint in a home he owned, brought to an impromptu military base built inside a bus station, accused of terrorism, and locked in an outdoor cage. It surpassed the most surreal accounts he’d heard of third-world law enforcement.

Inside the cage, Todd ranted and swore. He couldn’t believe it. But then again, he noted, it was not unprecedented. During Mardi Gras, when the local jails were full, the New Orleans police often housed drunks and thieves in temporary jails set up in tents.

This one, though, was far more elaborate, and had been built since the storm. Looking at it, Zeitoun realized that it was not one long cage, but a series of smaller, divided cages. He had seen similar structures before, on the properties of his clients who kept dogs. This cage, like those, was a single-fenced enclosure divided into smaller ones. He
counted sixteen. It looked like a giant kennel, and yet it looked even more familiar than that.

It looked precisely like the pictures he’d seen of Guantánamo Bay. Like that complex, it was a vast grid of chain-link fencing with few walls, so the prisoners were visible to the guards and each other. Like Guantánamo, it was outdoors, and there appeared to be nowhere to sit or sleep. There were simply cages and the pavement beneath them.

The space inside Zeitoun and Todd’s cage was approximately fifteen by fifteen feet, and was empty but for a portable toilet without a door. The only other object in the cage was a steel bar in the shape of an upside-down U, cemented into the pavement like a bike rack. It normally served as a guide for the buses parking in the lot and for passengers forming lines. It was about thirty inches high, forty inches long.

Across from Zeitoun’s cage was a two-story building, some kind of Amtrak office structure. It was now occupied by soldiers. Two soldiers stood on the roof, holding M-16s and staring down at Zeitoun and Todd.

Todd raged, wild-eyed and protesting. But the guards could hear little of what he said. Even Zeitoun, standing near him, could hear only muffled fragments. It was then that Zeitoun realized that there was a sound, a heavy mechanical drone, cloaking the air around them. It was so steady and unchanging that he had failed to notice it.

Zeitoun turned around and realized the source of the noise. The back of their cage nearly abutted the train tracks, and on the tracks directly behind them stood an Amtrak train engine. The engine was operating at full power on diesel fuel, and, Zeitoun realized in an instant, was generating all the electricity used for the station and the makeshift jail. He looked up at the monstrous grey machine, easily a hundred tons,
adorned with a small red, white, and blue logo, and knew that it would be with them, loud and unceasing, as long as they were held there.

One guard was assigned to them. He sat on a folding chair about ten feet in front of the cage. He stared at Zeitoun and Todd, his face curious and disdainful.

Zeitoun was determined to get a phone call. He reached for the chain-link fence in front of him, intending to get the attention of an officer of some kind he saw near the back door of the station. Todd did so, too, and was immediately set straight by the guard who had been assigned to watch them.

“Don’t touch the fence!” the guard snapped.

“Don’t touch the fence? Are you kidding?” Todd asked.

But the soldier was not joking. “You touch the fence again I’ll fuck you up.”

Todd asked where they were supposed to stand. He was told they could stand in the middle of the cage. They could sit on the steel rack. They could sit on the ground. But if they touched the fence again there would be consequences.

There were a dozen other guards roaming behind the terminal. One walked by, led by a German shepherd. He made sure to pause meaningfully at their cage, giving Zeitoun and Todd a look of warning before moving on.

Zeitoun could barely stand. There was a stabbing pain in his foot he had ignored until now. He took off his shoe to find his instep discolored. There was something wedged under his skin—some kind of metal splinter, he thought, though he couldn’t remember where or
when he’d gotten it. The area was purple in the center, ringed by white. He needed to clear out the splinter or the foot would get worse, and quickly.

Zeitoun and Todd took turns sitting on the steel rack. It was only wide enough for one person, so they traded ten-minute shifts.

After an hour, the doors to the station burst open. Nasser and Ronnie appeared, escorted by three officers. Zeitoun and Todd’s cage was opened, and Nasser and Ronnie were pushed inside. The cage was locked again. The four men were reunited.

Under the rumble of the engine, the men compared their experiences thus far. All four had been strip-searched. Only Todd had been told why they were being held—possession of stolen goods was the only charge mentioned—and none had been read their rights. None had been allowed to make a phone call.

Nasser had tried to explain the cash he had in his knapsack. The police and soldiers were in the city to prevent the widespread looting everyone had heard about. Nasser, being equally concerned about the looting, had decided to keep his money, his life savings, with him.

His interrogators did not accept this. Nasser had had no luck explaining that legions of immigrants kept their money in cash, that trust in banks was tenuous. He explained that one reason a person in his position kept his money in cash was for the possibility, however remote, that he would be stopped, questioned, detained—or deported. With cash he could hide it, keep it, direct its retrieval if he was sent away.

The four men didn’t know what would happen to them, but they knew they would spend the night in the cage.

The Syrian names of Zeitoun and Dayoob, their Middle Eastern
accents, the ten thousand dollars cash, Todd’s cash and MapQuest printouts—it all added up to enough evidence that the four of them knew that their predicament would not be straightened out anytime soon.

“We’re screwed, friends,” Todd said.

In the cage, the men had few options: they could stand in the center, they could sit on the cement, or they could lean against the steel rack. No one wanted to sit on the ground. The cement beneath them was filthy with dirt and grease. If they made a move toward the fence, the guards would yell obscenities and threaten retribution.

For the first hours in the cage, Zeitoun’s overriding goal was to be granted a phone call. All the men had made the request repeatedly during processing, and had been told that there were no phones functioning.

This seemed to be fact. They saw no one talking on cell phones or landlines. There was a rumor that satellite phones were working and that there was one phone, connected to a fax line, in the upstairs office of the bus station.

Every time a guard passed, they begged for access to this or any phone. At best they got shrugs and glib answers.

“Phones don’t work,” a guard told them. “You guys are terrorists. You’re Taliban.”

The day’s light was dimming. Processing had taken three hours, and the four men had been in the cage for three more. They were each given small cardboard boxes with the words B
ARBECUE
P
ORK
R
IB
printed on the side. Inside was a set of plastic cutlery, a packet of cheese spread, two crackers, a packet of orange-drink crystals, and a bag of pork ribs.
These were military-style meals, ready to eat.

Zeitoun told the guard that he and Nasser were Muslims and could not eat pork.

The guard shrugged. “Then don’t eat it.”

Zeitoun and Nasser ate the crackers and cheese and gave the rest to Todd and Ronnie.

With the darkness coming, the sound behind them seemed to grow louder. Already he was tired, but Zeitoun knew that the engine would ensure that none of them slept. He had worked on ships before, in engine rooms, but this was louder than that, louder than anything he had ever known. In the glare of the floodlights, it resembled a great furnace, moaning and ravenous.