Speaking Volumes

I recently read the new book Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers, and watched the Academy Award Nominated documentary, Trouble the Water. Both tell the stories of individuals who stayed in New Orleans during Katrina. Both were…upsetting, moving, heartbreaking, and shocking. I’m actually embarrassed about how much the two stories shocked me. When Katrina hit I was 21 and had just graduated college. I mean, I remember the news coverage, so why did it take these two stories to make me really realize what a horrible mess Katrina and her aftermath was…and still is?

          
 
In Zeitoun, Dave Eggers writes the true story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a successful Syrian-born painting contractor, who decides to stay in New Orleans during Katrina to protect his home and rental properties while his wife and children leave the city. In the days following the levee break, Zeitoun travels his neighborhood in a canoe, bringing food and water to people, helping to rescue elderly neighbors, checking on friends, and feeding some of the starving pets left behind. So, when midway through the book a group of police storm into his home and take Zeitoun to a makeshift jail outside of a Greyhound Station, my jaw hit the floor. The police accuse him of being a terrorist and he is held for weeks without even a phone call. His family thinks he’s dead and his wife and children start to mourn. The story that follows his arrest is truly unjust and unbelievable.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun and his family below:

                
 
Trouble the Water uses footage shot by Kimberly Roberts before, during, and after the storm. Kim and her husband Scott, along with many of their neighbors in the lower ninth ward, stayed through Katrina, not because they wanted to, but because they had no other options. Without cars, access to rental cars, no alternate place to stay, and NO public transportation out of the city. Kim and her neighbors end up holed up in an attic for days after the storm. They band together and make their way by boat to a local navel base that has hundreds of empty rooms. When they arrive and ask for help they are turned away at gunpoint. The film goes on to show Kim and Scott leave the city and then return to see the devastation. However, instead of tears and anger at what they’ve been though, Kim and Scott are happy – happy to see their two dogs made it through the storm, especially as they pass the bodies of other pets that lay rotting in the road. Happy because the photograph of Kim’s mother – her only one- wasn’t ruined in the floods. Their story is a powerful one and I would definitely recommend seeing it.

Here Kim and Scott are reunited with their dogs more than two weeks after the storm:

      
 
Zeitoun and Trouble the Water really show how disaster can bring out best and the worst in people. Both show ordinary people acting like heroes, and those who were supposed to be the heroes acting like, well like they aren’t even human. Both are available here at the library.