Zeitoun!

OK, friends, have any of you read this book and, if so, why didn't you tell me about it before? Were you afraid I'd go into another rant? How did this story, Zeitoun, get by my radar screen? I'm sure I've had customers ask for it and that book groups are talking about it. Did I think Dave Eggers was too "difficult" for me?

I'm about 60 pages from the end of this true story about one family's surreal experience, having lived through Hurricane Katrina but almost being destroyed by their own country. "Heck of a job Brownie!" This reads more like a novel and, if you pretend it's one, then you might be able to finish it without having your head explode the way mine is right now! It's like 1984 revisited.

The Zeitouns, a large, loving family have lived and worked in New Orleans for many years. Kathy raises their four kids and runs the business end of the painting contracting company while her husband, Abdulrahman, is the personality and workaholic, out in folks' houses all day. Do you get it yet? They are Muslim. Has it mattered in the past? Not at all. They are very successful, own several houses, and have friends all over the city. Their faith is a non-issue, as it should be.

With Katrina bearing down on the city, Kathy, the native Louisianan, begins to worry and pushes for them to leave. They have family a few hours away who will take them in. But Abdul is a stubborn man and not easily persuaded to leave what he considers his responsibilities behind. You all know the rest, don't you? Zeitoun stays, weathering the storm handily, but awakens two days later to the sound of water running through the first floor of his home.
 Salvaging what he can, he moves up to the roof where he pitches a tent, ties up his old canoe and spends his days paddling around the city helping any stray animals and people that he can. He and Kathy talk on the phone every day at noon like clockwork, she, along with Mayor Nagin, still pressing him to come to her and the kids.

And the nightmare begins. Five men and a woman, in full riot gear, armed with M-16's, rush Zeitoun's home, manhandling him and his friends. Strip-searched, thrown in outdoor dog cages and fed only pork, which of course, he could not eat, Zeitoun was held for 3 days without access to a telephone, without any explanation, but with the kinds of slurs - "Al Qaida, Taliban" - that let him know he wasn't being held for staying in the city without permission.

What follows is a week of such torture, such appalling treatment, such despair, that my stomach kept clenching as I read. How could this happen, you might ask, in the United States of America? Transferred to a super-max security prison, still without a phone call being made for him, an atty. or anyone else even knowing if he was alive or dead, Zeitoun and I began to lose hope. Admittedly, I had to go to their foundation's website to assure myself of the outcome before I could continue reading. http://www.zeitounfoundation.org/index.php

Dave Eggers has written a must-read book that should serve as a warning to anyone out there who, in their proud American complacency, echoes that old saw, "it couldn't happen here." It could, it did and it will again. All proceeds of the sale of this book go to the Zeitoun foundation to help rebuild New Orleans. Buy it, read it, pass it on.