Abdulrahman Zeitoun emigrated to the United States as a young man. In America, no one calls him by his first name for obvious reasons. Too many syllables. Only his family in his native Syria calls him Abdulrahman. Everyone else greets him as Zeitoun (pronounced “zay-toon”).  He came to the U.S. for the same reasons that millions before him had: to pursue the American Dream. Zeitoun saw America as a place that no matter how low your birth, through hard work and perseverance you could succeed.

Zeitoun was right. He did succeed. As a house painter in New Orleans, Zeitoun was something of a workaholic. He loved his work and he loved the idea of having his own business. Over time, he was able to hire some employees, buy a small storage warehouse in downtown New Orleans in which he kept his paints, solvents, ladders and other materials and expand the number of jobs that his company could take on.

Through a friend, Zeitoun was introduced to an American woman named Kathy who had converted to Islam. Zeitoun immediately had feelings for her. Unfortunately, those feelings were not at first reciprocated. But Zeitoun is nothing if not persistent with a dash of stubborness thrown in. With great patience he was able to win Kathy’s love over time. Kathy and Zeitoun were married and produced four wonderful children: Nademah, Zachary, Safiya and Aisha.

Kathy and Zeitoun were happy. She learned his business and took over the record-keeping and customer relations aspect of it. She was able to work from home and thus freed Zeitoun up to expand the business.

Like all marriages, they had their minor problems. Kathy’s biggest beef with Zeitoun, besides the fact that he was stubborn, was that all Zeitoun would do is work. Being a religious man, the only thing Zeitoun would take time off for was to go to prayers. Kathy and the children would have to take vacations by themselves. Zeitoun always told her he couldn’t leave. He had to check the job sites – to make sure the workers had all the materials they needed for the job, to make sure that there were no customer complaints and to deal with them if there were. Kathy understood, but she didn’t really accept it. On those rare times when Kathy could badger Zeitoun to take a day trip to the beach, he would be calling the job sites from the beach.

The Zeitouns were busy living the American dream in 2005 when Kathy saw on the news the approach of a hurricane. She knew at once that this one was going to be different, just by the way the news people were talking about it. It was named Katrina. Kathy also knew she had a big problem. Zeitoun wouldn’t leave no matter how much she pleaded. And plead she did. Right up to the time Zeitoun put her and the four kids into the family SUV with instructions to go to family 50 miles north. Zeitoun calmly told her that he would be fine. He wanted to protect his house and his job sites from looting. He also had the small warehouse to look after and a rental unit he had purchased. If the renters had stayed, Zeitoun thought they might need repairs after the hurricane. Zeitoun told Kathy and the kids that he would see them in a couple of days. Kathy drove away reluctantly.

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Zeitoun spent that Sunday getting ready to hunker down for the hurricane. Anticipating leaks and possible flooding, Zeitoun moved everything he could lift by himself from the first floor to the second. He had plenty of food including a freezer full of meat and many cases of bottled water. He had candles and flashlights for any power outage that may occur.

Zeitoun spent the day on Monday battling the effects of the hurricane on his house. There was some damage and numerous leaks. Of course, he lost all power. Zeitoun worked to contain the leaks so they would not destroy the family’s belongings. Zeitoun worked all day and stayed up late. He was tired when he went to bed and the hurricane was still going on outside.

Zeitoun slept late Tuesday. He awoke to the sound of gurgling water. At first he thought that there must be a broken pipe somewhere in the house. He had been sleeping in his daughter’s bedroom on the second floor. He went over to the window and looked out. What he saw was surreal. There was water everywhere. Zeitoun knew by the green color of the water that this was lake water. The water was rising rapidly at a frightening pace. He knew that a levee had been compromised. His first thoughts were elevate, elevate. He went downstairs and pulled all the electronic equipment in the house including the TV and brought it upstairs. He called Kathy in Baton Rouge and told her the water was coming. She had seen it on TV and was alarmed for Zeitoun. She told him the things he needed to bring upstairs before he was unable to go downstairs again.

By nightfall the neighborhood was under nine feet of water and Zeitoun could no longer go downstairs. The house was hot, humid and now filling with water. Zeitoun did not believe he would be able to go to sleep inside. His garage was one of those with a flat top so Zeitoun could set up his camp on the garage roof by just climbing out the bedroom window. He set up his tent and grill out there. Sitting on his garage roof and gazing around was an other-worldly experience. There was utter silence. Not even the sound of a phone ringing because the phone boxes were now under water.  No lights because there was no power. Just the ever-rising water.

Zeitoun was sitting on his roof wondering how long he would be stuck there when he remembered the canoe. Several months before, he had purchased a canoe on a whim at a flea market. He had only used it once or twice and then tethered it to the back of his garage and forgot about it. He looked over the back of his garage and there it was floating in the water still tied to the garage. Zeitoun now had mobility!!

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Zeitoun began to take trips around the neighborhood in the canoe. On his first trip he heard dogs barking. He rowed over to the house and looked in the window from where he heard the dogs. They had fled to the 2nd floor because the first was under water. He told the dogs he would be back with food. Riding a little further he heard more dogs. He had to find a wooden plank, climb a tree and walk the plank from the tree to window sill to see the dogs. Zeitoun decided he would make a route. He had plenty of meat in his freezer. He would cook it on the barbecue  before it went bad. He had bottled water. He would make a route and feed the dogs every day. He did just that.

Zeitoun began to run into people in need when doing his route. In one harrowing case he heard a woman crying for help. The woman was on the lower floor of her house clinging to the top of a bookcase to keep her head just above water in the small space between the ceiling and the water. She was obese. Zeitoun estimated that she was about 80 years old. She told him that she couldn’t swim. She said she’d been hanging on to this bookcase since the flooding and didn’t think she could hold on much longer.  Zeitoun realized he needed help. He told her to hang on and that he would be back shortly with help.

He went towards town and tried to flag down one of the government fan boats. They ignored him and swerved around him. Zeitoun wondered why they never turned their fans off when in the neighborhoods. How could they hear the cries for help with the roar of the fans. Zeitoun thought that they were here to be heroes. To save the desperate and the trapped. After all, this was America, not some third world banana republic.

Zeitoun found a couple of civilian young men riding in their boat,  and they followed him back to the house. The woman was still holding on for dear life. He asked her if she had a ladder and she said there was one in the garage. Zeitoun went through the muck and retrieved the ladder. He brought it through the window. He told her he was going under water and bringing the ladder up under her. She was to grab it and lay on it and he would swim her over to the window. The boys would pull her through the window and into their boat. This went off without a hitch. The boys took her to the overpass where civilians were being collected for evacuation under armed guards, looking for all the world like prisoners in captivity rather than people who were being liberated.

In another instance Zeitoun found an elderly couple who were stuck on the second floor of their house in need of provisions and evacuation. He took down their address and went downtown to the overpass. Upon approach, the soldiers pulled their guns and trained them on Zeitoun, telling him to come no closer. He told them that he had a piece of paper with an address of a couple in dire need of evacuation. They allowed him to give a soldier the paper. He asked the soldier when they would be picked up. He was told “in about an hour”. The next day Zeitoun found the couple on his route. No one had ever come or contacted them.

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Zeitoun went to his rental house. One tenant had remained; the others had evacuated. The first floor was underwater, as they were everywhere. He remembered that this house had its phone box on the second floor. He was delighted to find that the phone still worked. He immediately called Kathy who was tremendously relieved to hear from him. She beseeched him to leave the city and come join her. She explained that she was going to Phoenix to stay with a life-long friend since it appeared that with the flooding it would be some time before she was allowed to come home. She didn’t like staying with her relatives because they chided her constantly about her religious conversion.

Zeitoun explained to Kathy that he could not leave. He told her that he had found some inner-peace with his canoe trips. A new purpose to his life. This experience has injected new meaning into his life. He felt that God had kept him behind to help the people and the animals. This is where he was supposed to be. Zeitoun was at peace with himself. Kathy lobbied him to no avail. She told him it was too dangerous. As things turned out, Kathy was right.

Kathy had made Zeitoun promise to call her every day at 12 noon. She told him she would be by the phone every day at that hour waiting for it to ring. He understood the importance of these calls to her.  No matter how busy he was, or how urgent the nature of  what he was doing, Zeitoun always stopped in plenty of time to paddle his canoe to his rental house and make this all-important call to his wife on the only working phone in all of New Orleans as far as he knew. Kathy always told him about the horrors she was seeing on TV at the Superdome and other places. Zeitoun told her how he had run into an old friend who was now making the rounds in the canoe with him. They both told each other that they hoped the ordeal would end soon. It wouldn’t.

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On Tuesday September 6, a full week and one day after the hurricane, Zeitoun and his friend Nasser were making the rounds in the canoe. Getting close to noon, he began to paddle to the rental house to make his call to Kathy who was sitting by the phone in Phoneix. When he arrived at the house there was a stranger there. His renter explained that this stranger had come here with his own canoe because he heard there  was a working phone and he wanted to notify his loved ones that he was still alive. Zeitoun was fine with that. Zeitoun went over to the phone  and noticed that it was still a few minutes before 12. He decided to call his brother Ahmad in Spain first, so that he could have his family in Syria notified that he was well. While talking to Ahmad, Zeitoun heard Nasser yell from the front room that there were some men here. Zeitoun told Ahmed that he would call back later and hung up.

He walked into the living room just in time to see six heavily armed individuals dressed in mismatched police uniforms and jungle fatigues storm into the building. All had M-16s and pistols. There were at least 10 guns drawn. Zeitoun protested that he was the owner of the house. He asked to call his wife and notify her. He was ignored. He was pushed out of the house onto an enormous fan boat, as were the three others. Zeitoun submitted to the ride without panicking with all the guns aimed at him and the others. He would straighten out this misunderstanding when he got to speak to those in authority downtown. After all, this was America, not some third rate banana republic.

The boat took them to the intersection of Napoleon and St. Charles where the water was shallow. The moment Zeitoun and the three other men were led off the boat, a dozen soldiers descended  on them. Zeitoun was tackled by at least two, perhaps three men. He was pushed face down into the grass. He spat out mud. There was a knee in his back and hands on his legs. His arms were pulled back and he was handcuffed with ties. His legs were tied together. All this while a circle of soldiers with guns aimed and fingers on triggers watched. Out of the corner of his eye Zeitoun saw that the three others were getting the same treatment.

They were thrown into a white van. Zeitoun asked one of the soldiers to feed the dogs while he was gone. “Sure,” the soldier said. Zeitoun said, “Do you want the address?” “No,” the soldier answered. “I already know where they are,” he said walking away.

The van took Zeitoun and company to the New Orleans Bus Terminal. Zeitoun was amazed to see what he would find there.

Little Gitmo

The four of them were taken to an office for questioning. Todd, the tenant, went first. Todd demanded his phone call, and they said no. Zeitoun was listening to Todd fight with his interrogators. Todd demanded to know why he was here. “Because you’re al Qaeda,” the soldier answered. Zeitoun was startled to hear this, and for the first time he was now worried.

For the first time in this ordeal Zeitoun became frightened of the position he was in.  Since 911 Zeitoun and Kathy knew how important it was for people of his ethnicity to steer clear of trouble. They knew how fertile the American imagination was and how that imagination had run amok. How “sleeper cells” in America were waiting for their instructions from their presumed leaders in the hills of Afghanistan and Pakistan. So many of their Muslim friends  had been called in and interviewed, forced to send in documents and hire lawyers.  Of course, there had been the sneers and comments that all Muslims had been forced to deal with in the years following 911, but no real trouble.

After being interviewed, Zeitoun was marched into a small room by three soldiers and told to remove his clothes. He was told to bend over, spread his legs and put his elbows on the table. One soldier put on gloves and Zeitoun felt his fingers go into his rectum doing a cavity search. Zeitoun was humiliated and wondered how this could be happening when he’d been charged with nothing, not given his phone call or read his rights. But Zeitoun’s surprise was only beginning. The soldiers marched him through the doors to where the New Orleans Buses would normally be parked. What he saw took Zeitoun’s breath away.

Zeitoun gazed upon a mini-Gitmo. Chain linked fences topped by razor wire were divided into many cells, each padlocked and containing prisoners. He was led to his cell which contained the three people he was arrested with. He was put in and told that prisoners were not allowed to touch the fencing, a bizarre rule because there were no chairs or bed in the cells. So prisoners had to stand up or lay flat on the floor. They could not sit or lean on the cage walls for support. If all four lay down they could barely do so without touching the walls. He wondered how they could get through and construct this entire prison complete with porta potties and office equipment in the wake of the storm while claiming that they couldn’t get supplies to the Superdome only three blocks away. Zeitoun was still laboring under the illusion that the mission of the military and police was to come to the aid of distressed citizens in an emergency. You couldn’t blame him for getting that wrong. After all, this is America, not some third world banana republic.

Zeitoun soon learned what happened to prisoners who violated the don’t touch the cage rule. Each time it happened the prisoner would be taken out of his cage and his feet were tied and his hands were tied behind his back. Then he would be pepper sprayed. With his hands tied he couldn’t cover his eyes. This went on over and over again.

Zeitoun remained 5 days in Little Gitmo. With each passing day the guards became less and less human. He asked each guard to give him his phone call and he was ignored. One guard turned to him and said, “You’re Taliban.”

They gave him pork sandwiches to eat. He told them he couldn’t eat them because of his religious views. The guard answered, “Then don’t.” He received  more and more of this kind of food and resorted to eating only the bread from the sandwiches. He lost weight at an alarming rate. He developed what he thought was a kidney infection and asked for medical attention. He received benign neglect. He had a constant pain in his side.

One night Zeitoun witnessed a new low for the guards. They had this bean bag gun. You know, the kind of gun used to knock a fleeing suspect off his feet. And they still had the pepper spay gun. The guards took turns shooting at random into the cages to see who could knock more prisoners off their feet. Entertainment for the troops! Better than video. Using real live people for your amusement.

Zeitoun stayed in this hell-hole for 5 days. During that period he was in pain most of the time. He slept very little due to the florescent lights bearing down 24/7 directly over  his cage. He lost a lot of weight. He had become weak. His heart ached for what he was putting Kathy through. He thought about the dogs that no one was feeding. At no time during his stay at Little-Gitmo did one person in authority treat him as a fellow human being.

Meanwhile, back in Phoenix, Kathy was beside herself. Ahmad was calling every day to see if she had heard from Zeitoun. He had told her about Zeitoun having to get off the line because someone was at the door. Were they law enforcement? Looters? Murderers? She didn’t know and had no way of finding out. Ahmad wanted Kathy to go back to New Orleans and find her husband. Kathy knew that authorities had called off access to New Orleans. All roads were closed. They were not letting people back in for any reason. Kathy began to fear the worst. She knew her husband. Zeitoun would let nothing stop him from calling if it was at all in his power. She knew the phone worked at the rental unit because she had the phone company test it. She was afraid that she was going to receive a phone call that her husband’s body had been found floating in the muck of New Orleans.

After 5 days Zeitoun and the other prisoners were put on a bus to be transferred north to the Hunt Correctional Center. Zeitoun hoped that this would mark the end of his long nightmare. It wouldn’t.

Elayn Hunt Correctional Center

Zeitoun was put in a 6′ x 8′ cell with Nasser and four other men. There was barely enough room to sit in the cell. They took turns with three sitting on the bed and 3 on the floor switching every hour. The entire cell block was people who had been picked up during Katrina and after. Zeitoun and some others were being held by FEMA awaiting Homeland Security. Zeitoun begged every guard to let him make his phone call. He told everyone who passed by his cell of the severe pain in his side. He received no medical attention and no phone call.

On Tuesday, September 13, four prisoners were removed from his cell. Zeitoun and Nasser discussed the possibility they may never be heard from again. No one knew they were there. It appeared that the authorities had complete and unchecked power to keep them detained and hidden indefinitely . Zeitoun wondered if Homeland Security would ever admit a mistake and free him. Or would they just ship him down to Gitmo and let him rot there?

By September 15, the pain in Zeitoun’s side had over-taken him. He was barely able to get to his feet and was dizzy when standing. Yet his requests for medical attention continued to go unheeded. He imagined Kathy in Phoenix being forced to contemplate a life without him. He wished he had listened to her at the beginning and evacuated with her. Zeitoun was losing hope.

On Sunday, September 18, Zeitoun was wakened by the sound of a cart coming down the aisle. It seems the cart was stopping at every cell. As it got closer, Zeitoun heard the missionary asking, “Would you like to hear the word of Jesus Christ?” If the cell member said yes they were given a bible. When the priest got to Zeitoun’s cage (he was now in solitary),  Zeitoun said, ” Please, sir. Please, I shouldn’t be here. I committed no crime. But no one knows I’m here. I haven’t gotten a phone call. My wife thinks I’m dead. Can you call her?”

The missionary closed his eyes, as if thinking about this. Then he opened them and looked both ways to make sure no guard was observing him. He ripped a page out of a bible and slipped it to Zeitoun with a pencil. He said, “Be quick.” Zeitoun wrote down the number and handed it back.

On Monday, September 19, Kathy was sitting in her bedroom crying. Hiding from the kids. She didn’t want them to see her like this. The phone rang. It was the missionary. Kathy’s world turned around with this phone call. She hired a lawyer. The rest of Dave Eggers excellent chronicle details the additional humiliations, indignities and roadblocks that the authorities placed in the path of freeing Zeitoun. But Kathy and her lawyer overcame each one.

Finally, on Thursday, September 29, Kathy was waiting at the gate when the bus pulled up. Off stepped Zeitoun. She ran to him for a long emotional embrace. She was stunned at how small, feeble and skeletal he seemed. She thought he was a broken man. She was wrong. She was the broken one.

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Zeitoun cried like a baby upon seeing that the dogs were dead. They had died awaiting for their savior, Zeitoun, to bring them their food and water.

Zeitoun is whole again. All he wanted was his life and his good name back. He’s a better man than I am. He has forgiven his captors and bears no malice towards them. I can’t forgive them, and it didn’t even happen to me.  Zeitoun still loves his adopted country, America, warts and all.  My son, who lives in New Orleans, tells me that Zeitoun is busier than ever. He sees his signs at job sites with the familiar rainbow company logo. Where better for a painter to be than in New Orleans after Katrina.

Kathy is another story. She is filled with anger and desires revenge. She wants justice. She has been diagnosed with post-tramatic stress disorder.  She gets episodes. She was at a teller’s window at her bank when she got her first episode. All of a sudden, the teller was speaking incomprehensible gibberish. All the people around her were speaking gibberish. She looked at the checkbook in her hand and didn’t know what to do with it. She couldn’t comprehend what a checkbook was. The teller was asking her if she should go get help. After a couple of minutes, Kathy came back. Now she gets the episodes with increasing frequency. Sometimes her kids are speaking gibberish and she doesn’t know who they are. Kathy is broken. She is also filled with anger.

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You need to read the whole story of Zeitoun in Dave Eggers’ great book.  We as a country need to have a discussion. Whether it be Abu Ghraib or the epidemic of tasering or episodes like Zeitoun’s, it should be clear that something is very wrong. Heck, in places like Arizona, with many states to follow, we are actively encouraging law-enforcement to deprive citizen’s of their constitutional rights.  We have to stop sweeping these events under the rug with “the few bad apples” excuse. It’s not a few bad apples. It’s a systemic problem that is growing worse.

I’m no expert, and I don’t have the solutions. We have seen the “mob mentality” that takes place when military and police are put in stressful situations. In New Orleans, it appears as if the police and soldiers were told to protect property and forget about the people because anyone who’s still left after the evacuation is either a criminal or a thug. I don’t know if they were told that, but they acted as if they were. The point is, we have to stop sweeping this under the rug and have a national dialog. We need to remember that law enforcement is supposed to work for us. We should not be in fear of it. We can have this discussion. This is a democracy. This is America, not some third rate banana republic.