Abdulrahman Zeitoun, Syrian-born New Orleans building contractor.

Kathy Zeitoun, New Orleans resident.

Dave Eggers, author of six books, his latest is Zeitoun. Founder of the independent publishing house and literary journal McSweeney’s

Abdulrahaman Zeitoun is a Syrian-born immigrant to the United States who lived in New Orleans with his wife Kathy, an American convert to Islam, and their children. Together, they ran a successful painting and contracting business and are well known in the local community of New Orleans.

As the storm approached the city in late August 2005, Kathy and her kids fled to Baton Rouge to her sister’s house. They then proceeded to a friend’s home in Phoenix, Arizona, where they waited out the storm. Meanwhile, Abdulrahman Zeitoun was ready with his sixteen-foot aluminum canoe when Katrina made landfall as a Category 3 storm on August 29th.

The book tells the story of how Zeitoun spent days rescuing people stranded in the storm, until he was picked up by an armed squad who accused him of being a terrorist. He was held for three weeks without any contact with his family. They thought he was dead.

In an exclusive broadcast interview, I spoke with Abdulrahman Zeitoun and his wife Kathy yesterday, as well as the bestselling writer, publisher, Dave Eggers, whose numerous works include A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, also the founder of the independent publishing house and literary journal McSweeney’s.

I began the interview by asking Dave Eggers to explain how he first came across the story of what the Zeitouns went through in the aftermath of Katrina.

DAVE EGGERS: At McSweeney’s, we have a small publishing company in San Francisco, and we have a series called "Voice of Witness" that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. And the first book in the series was about the wrongfully convicted and exonerated here in the US. And right when that book was coming out, Katrina hit, and so we talked to a lot of friends that we had in Houston, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Atlanta, and people fanned out and began interviewing New Orleanians who had fled the storm. And when we started getting the transcripts back and the tapes back from the interviewers, I saw the story of the Zeitouns, and I was struck by it on so many levels. And so, the next time I was in New Orleans a few months later, I met the family, and we spent many hours together, and I got to know the kids.


And I think even—you know, I was struck by it on this—on the level of—you know, I don’t think many of us knew of this intersection, this improbable intersection of the war on terror and Katrina, and how the folding of FEMA into Homeland Security affected the response to Katrina. And there were so many sort of political aspects of it, and I was interested in it on a journalistic level. But it was also getting to know this family that I connected to almost immediately. And also, you know, their story goes so deep, you know, and Zeitoun’s family story in Syria was so fascinating. And Kathy’s conversion to Islam was, I think, a really valuable way to introduce Islam to readers that might not know too much about it.


And so, they’re this all-American family. They encompass the immigrant experience, the American Dream, all these all-American values in New Orleans. And then, at the same time, you know, he was put in this moment in time where he rose to a challenge and became a hero. And then, of course, something terrible happened that I hope could never happen again in this country, that it was a moment in time when we didn’t live up to our highest values and aspirations. And so, there were so many aspects of it that interested me. But again, most of it was a personal connection to the family, that, you know, now it’s five years on, and we’re inextricably woven together and very close. And so, it was their faith in me and their trust in me and their courage in telling their story that made it possible.


AMY GOODMAN: Dave Eggers, could you tell us a little bit of what you just told us in shorthand, where Zeitoun—where Abdulrahaman Zeitoun was born, how he grew up, how he ended up here and then went from the horror of the storm to the horror of the prison, after being considered a hero?


DAVE EGGERS: Well, you know, some of the—one of the great parts of researching a book like this was to go back to his hometown of Jableh on the coast of Syria and see this—what was, at the time, when he was growing up, a pretty small fishing village. And it’s grown somewhat since then. But I was able to meet his brothers and sisters, all of whom—or most of whom are still there, and also see their—his grandmother’s home town, which is on an island called Arwad Island, which is just off the coast to near Tartus, and get to know everybody and see, you know, and get to know generations of the Zeitouns. And they—it’s an incredibly illustrious family that has—you know, they’ve achieved so many things. You know, they’re professors, and they’re principals of schools and doctors, and, you know, his brother Ahmed is a ship captain, and I got to spend time with him in Spain.


And so, you know, Zeitoun grew up there, and he eventually became a merchant sailor, sailing around the world on many different vessels, helping to load and unload. And he saw the world that way and finally stopped in the US. You know, he first settled in Baton Rouge, and then New Orleans. And he built this business from scratch, because he had grown up around a lot of different trades, and he got to know masonry and painting and carpentry. And he was—you know, he worked for a lot of other contractors, and he was the hardest working guy that they had ever seen. And so, pretty soon he had his own business. Soon after, he married Kathy, and they built this business together as, like, equal partners in, you know, handling different sides of the business.


And so, in every way, they really do embody the American Dream: hard work, family and a dedication to one’s neighbors. You could see how one of the reasons that he stayed behind when the storm hit was to take care of his clients’ homes. He has keys to every one of them. He’s got, you know, hundreds of keys to homes all over the city, because he’s taken care of these houses, and so—and everybody trusts him with them, so—which makes it all the more tragic, I think, and exasperating that he is the model citizen in so many ways and he was victimized this way.


AMY GOODMAN: Talk about that day, September 6th, and the different men who, oh, Zeitoun had been going around with, helping others with. Talk about Nasser and Todd and, from your research, what happened that day.


DAVE EGGERS: Well, Nasser was a friend of Zeitoun’s who also was Syrian, and he—they had gone back. They knew each other for many, many years. And he had been living in the city as a—you know, first came here as a graduate student at Tulane. And they ran into each other after the storm. And Nasser helped distribute supplies with Zeitoun in the canoe, and they spent many days together. And Nasser was living at that house on Claiborne, too. And then, Todd Gambino is a resident there, and he—you know, a whole book could be written about Todd, because he saved many, many lives and—going around on a motorboat. And then there was this relative stranger named Ronnie that none of them knew, but who had stopped by once or twice to use the phone.


And, you know, after all of this happened, I was sure—I got a copy of the arrest record, and I wanted to see who the officers were on the arrest record. There were two there. And so, I tracked down both of them, one of whom was a veteran officer from New Mexico who had come to New Orleans after the storm, and then the main officer was a New Orleans police officer who had been going around up and down Claiborne and had been—he says that he—in my interview with him, he said that he observed them looting, all four of them looting a Walgreens. And in the end, there was no evidence of any looting. He didn’t recover any stolen goods at the house or anything like that. And so—but he went to Napoleon-St. Charles, where many military and other officers were gathered, and he got a team together, and then they came into the house and raided it and arrested all four of them. And so, I found it totally important to interview these two officers.


And I think, you know, had the whole system been working, had there been due process, had there been public defenders available and a rational bail set and phone calls available to people and people being able to be visited by or contact their relatives or family, and had any of these other things that we take for granted been in place, a lot of the injustices would have been mitigated to some extent. But none of these were—none of these systems were working. And so, once they were arrested and brought, you know, in this van, driven by our National Guardsmen, brought to Camp Greyhound, they got lost in the system. That’s when the system was broken down. And even if the arrest had been wrongful and the evidence wasn’t there, under normal circumstances, they would have been free on bail, and the charges would have been dropped momentarily. But in this case, because none of these other systems were working, that’s how they and hundreds of others were lost in the Louisiana prison system. And, you know, Todd Gambino did many months in prison, and Nasser did many months in prison. And hundreds of others did what was known as "Katrina time," where they were lost in the system. Records weren’t kept. Some people weren’t allowed to make phone calls or meet with lawyers—or anyone—for upwards of a year. And so, it was a complete meltdown of the system, unfortunately.

AMY GOODMAN: Dave Eggers has just won the American Book Award for his book Zeitoun. He’s joining us from New Orleans. We’re going to come back to Dave, but before we do, we’re going to hear from the Zeitouns themselves in their own words. Stay with us.

[break]