Zeitoun+by+Thomas+Streit

Thomas Streit Period 4/5 English Date completed: 3/16/11 Journal #1 __Zeitoun__ by Dave Eggers pgs 1-81

Summary: //Zeitoun// so far has mainly been about Abdulrahman Zeitoun and his wife Kathy who are both Muslim and live in New Orleans with their children. Zeitoun and his wife work together for a painting and contracting business, that is very in well known and relied on in New Orleans. The book starts out talking about Abdulrahman Zeitoun’s childhood in Jableh, Syria when he was thirteen years old. Zeitoun and his brother Ahmad were fishermen to support their family because their father passed away the year before and their mother was very sick. Throughout the book, little references are made to Zeitoun’s life about how bad his old life was, and how good it is now. Kathy lived in Baton Rogue and converted to Islam later in life. Zeitoun and his wife are working throughout the town on many projects, and now that they hear a hurricane is coming, many people want their windows boarded up. When Zeitoun and Kathy hear about the hurricane, named “Katrina”, they don’t think it is a big deal because many hurricanes are tracked to hit New Orleans each year, and most of them never do. But every day the hurricane became stronger and stronger and still kept its path as New Orleans. Kathy got more worried each day, but Zeitoun wouldn’t believe there would be a hurricane until he felt it. The next day the storm becomes a category five storm and it is headed straight for New Orleans. Kathy decides to leave with the kids and Zeitoun wants to stay. Kathy and the family went to the family headquarter in Baton Rogue to wait out the storm. When Kathy is traveling to Baton Rogue she thinks about if she made the right decision to become Muslim. On the day before the worst part of the storm, many of his windows were breaking, but he said it was not big deal. After the first half of the storm, the damage was not bad, and their was only 18 inches of rainwater. The section ended with the storm still not being bad. So far, I think it is a very good book. It has not been very exciting so far, because it hasn’t reached the climax and it is leading up to the worst part of the storm. I am surprised that anyone with the common sense of Zeitoun would every decide to stay in New Orleans for a Category 5 Hurricane. I like how Eggers uses humor in Zeitoun’s part occasionally to brighten the mood, while everyone but Zeitoun is scared for their life about the Hurricane. Overall, right now I can’t say much because I haven’t read the big parts of the book yet, but so far it is good. __References__
 * Jableh, Syria
 * Hurricane Katrina
 * Places where most evacuees escaped to
 * Zeitoun A. Painting Contractor LLC ( probably a real business)
 * [|What a Category 5 hurricane entails]
 * Treatments of Muslims in New Orleans during this time

Thomas Streit Period 4/5 English 3/24/11  Journal #2 __Zeitoun__ by Dave Egger pgs. 85-170

Summary: This sections starts off with Zeitoun waking up and looking outside to see that there was much more water than before. It flooded the whole first floor of his house and he knew that the levees must have broken. Zeitoun had to sleep on his roof the next night because the water made the house very warm and humid. Zeitoun got his first call when he was riding around in his canoe looking for people to help, from one of his customers on the Wednesday after the storm. It was from a man named Frank, who at first wanted Zeitoun to get him some cigarettes, but later wanted him to check on his truck. On the way to checking on franks truck, Zeitoun helped many elderly people in distress and put them on an extra boat that showed up to help. Then Zeitoun and Frank went to one of his houses that he was renting out to check on it. His good friend Todd was there. Todd let Zeitoun use his phone, because it worked, to call Kathy, his wife. When he called her Kathy got very angry that he didn’t call her sooner. She wanted him to leave the area, but he said he was going to stay so he could help people that need it. Next, he took Frank home, went back to his house, looked at his pictures of his kids, and then went to bed. Then Zeitoun talks about his brother who was a great car racer, but died in one of his races. The next day the helicopter dropped off water for Zeitoun to give out to people. At the same time Kathy was driving to Houston with their kids to stay with one of their good friends Mary. Zeitoun went to bed hearing many helicopters overhead. The next morning like every morning he fed the dogs across the street. He found his friend Nasser and asked him if he wanted to stay with him, but he said no. Zeitoun helped a pastor of a church get to a hospital. The Next day Zeitoun looked in his fridge and saw that his meat would spoil soon. That day, Zeitoun and Todd five houses on fire. They could do nothing but watch. The next day, Zeitoun helped another woman and dropped her off at the church. Two cops in their town killed themselves to overcome the storm. The next day Zeitoun and Nasser were on the canoe when they say a plane crash and again could do nothing about it. The mayor then announced a forced evacuation of the city. At the end of this section, Zeitoun saw armed men barge into his house. I think this book is really good so far. It really captures the bad circumstances of this storm for people. It shows that everyone was stranded and needed help during this storm. I like that Zeitoun took time out to help others instead of trying to save what he could from his house, because most of it was water damaged anyway. It also tells me how badly the levees failed and how much trouble New Orleans was in. I was very surprised at the end of the section when the armed men came into his house, because it made me think Zeitoun would be arrested, and I could not understand why. This has been a great heroic story so far that should be told to everyone. __References:__ media type="youtube" key="s76Qn7bpCsQ" height="258" width="300" Thomas Streit Period 4/5 English 4/3/11  Journal # 3 __Zeitoun__ by Dave Eggers pgs 173-239
 * [|Levees that failed in New Orleans]
 * Houses that started fire in New Orleans
 * National Guard boats that came to help
 * Mandatory evacuation of New Orleans and how it was enforced
 * FEMA

Summary: This section starts off with Kathy, her family, and Zeitoun’s family all trying to find out where Zeitoun is. For many days they all called him and he never answered. Kathy was very worried because she heard a lot about people who had been dying in New Orleans, from the storm and from murder. Kathy checked a Red Cross center for the people of New Orleans, but he was not there. She had not spoken to him in six days and started to assume the worst. While all this had happened, Kathy tried to keep the kids occupied with trying to find a school, so they didn’t have to think about their father. Eventually, Kathy started to think about where they would live once they found Zeitoun. She either wanted to live in Arizona or Syria. Then she read about the mercenaries in New Orleans. They were primarily Israeli, so she thought they might have done something to him. Kathy wanted to go into the city and find Zeitoun, but the city was closed because another hurricane was coming, Hurricane Rita. Then later that day, almost two weeks without hearing from him, she got a call. The call was from a missionary, he said that Zeitoun was in prison. Zeitoun and Todd were taken out of their house at gunpoint and where brought to the superdome. The people who took them thought they were terrorists. They had taken them to a prison. The cops said that were held for possession of stolen goods. They faced lots of physical abuse. They were also given food with pork in it, which they were not allowed to eat. The conditions overall were terrible. I think this book has been very good so far. It really captures how badly Muslims were treated during this time. It shows the influence of terrorism during the disaster. It also shows how terrible the devastation was in the city and how people were actually being murdered right in front of their families at the superdome. It shows that people were dying of starvation, which just is beyond me that this could happen in our world today. This section really made me wonder where Zeitoun had gone, if he hade been murdered or injured by the armed men, or if he was taken away somewhere. Overall, I love this book so far and it really shows how terrible the situation was for everyone. __References__ · [|Crimes committed in streets of New Orleans after hurricane] · Death toll of whole disaster · [|Hurricane Rita] · Muslims taken to prison for supposedly being terrorists · Re-evacuation of the city for Rita



Thomas Streit Period 4/5 English 4/10/11  Journal # 4 Zeitoun by Dave Eggers pgs. 239-325

Summary: This section starts out with Zeitoun and the other prisoners getting on a bus to a maximum security prison. He stayed in a cell with other prisoners. He had a bad pain in his kidney for the last couple days. He was not allowed any calls and he really wanted to talk to his wife. Zeitoun started to worry he would be taken to Guantanamo Bay, because there had been many Muslims mistaken as terrorists taken there in recent years. The pain in Zeitoun’s kidney got so bad he could hardly stand. A couple days later, a missionary came by. Zeitoun asked him to call his wife for him. Then the next day Zeitoun was taken to a place where he was asked a few questions from a man from the Department of Homeland Security. He was asked questions about his life in New Orleans. The man apologized to Zeitoun for what had happened to him and the man told Zeitoun he would call Kathy, his wife. Once Kathy found out, she called the prison, but they had not record of him. So, Kathy and Zeitoun’s cousin decided to go to the prison themselves. Zeitoun’s bail was posted at $75,000. Kathy and Adnan went to their house in New Orleans to find the papers to prove they owned the house, because Zeitoun’s lawyer Raleigh told them they needed the papers to get Zeitoun released. After Zeitoun was released he went to the doctor for his kidney. He ended up being okay. His wife Kathy, on the other hand, was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. Kathy and Zeitoun ended up buying another house in New Orleans and having another child named Ahmad in honor of Zeitoun’s brother. The story ends with Zeitoun going back to his old life, same job, and same friends, trying to forget what had happened to him. This section of the book was probably the best part of the book. I liked it the most because it was a story about struggles in Zeitoun’s family, like the storm and the prison, that ended with a family being reunited together after a month of thinking their father and husband was dead. This book really shows how any Muslim person in New Orleans could have been mistaken as a terrorist and taken to a prison, where they are treated terrible and unfairly, and held there for months for doing no crime. I think this book also reveals how terrible the conditions in New Orleans were for everyone and the risks that they went through there. Overall, this book has been one of the best books I have ever read and I recommend it to anyone. References: · Camp Greyhound · Missionaries in maximum security prisons · Hunt Maximum security prison · Correctional centers for Muslims who were in prison during this time · [|Prisoners of Guantanamo Bay]