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Not that citizens of the Greater New Orleans area need any encouragement to reflect again on a life-changing event, but the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina will arrive later this month – Aug. 29.
The hope is it will arrive uneventfully and leave with little more than a whimper.
At the recent Social Action Summer Institute at Loyola University, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-born New Orleans house painter, transfixed his audience by relating his incredible odyssey in the days and months after Katrina.
As chronicled in “Zeitoun” by Dave Eggers – which now has been translated into 20 languages – Zeitoun had spent the days after Katrina rowing his canoe through flooded Uptown streets and rescuing stranded neighbors.
In a classic case of “no good deed going unpunished,” military personnel arrested Zeitoun a few days after Katrina while protecting his own home near Claiborne and Napoleon avenues.
Because he couldn’t produce ownership papers on the spot – even though his driver’s license backed up his claim he owned the home where he was staying – he was shuffled off to prison and spent weeks imprisoned, including time at Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, La. His pleas to make one phone call to clear up what should have been an open-and-shut case went unheeded for weeks.
“For three days we had no blankets – nothing,” Zeitoun recalled. “We were hanging on the overhead pipes like monkeys to take the pressure off our feet. I was being called ‘Al Qaeda’ and ‘Taliban.’”
Finally, Zeitoun’s wife Kathy, who had evacuated to Arizona with their children, was able to crawl back into their house through a window and find mortgage papers to prove her husband’s story.
No, he was not a terrorist or a member of the Taliban, but an American citizen.
Zeitoun said he hoped telling his story through Eggers would prevent similar travesties of justice in the future. He said he would rescue people again if he has the chance.
“Thank God I had a canoe, because one lady who was calling to me had a very soft voice,” Zeitoun said. “That’s the reason I could hear her. It was very quiet. The other boats were too noisy.”
Zeitoun holds no hard feelings.
“It is positive to let people know what happened because it should not happen again,” Zeitoun said. “I hope it doesn’t happen again in the future. If it happens, we should be prepared differently. I just did what each one of us should do.”
A portion of the proceeds of the book has been earmarked for the Zeitoun Foundation to aid in the rebuilding an ongoing health of the city of New Orleans and to ensure the human rights of all Americans. Thus far the foundation has distributed $200,000 in grants.
“I have wonderful neighbors, friends and customers,” Zeitoun said. “I look to America the same way my family looks to America. It’s a wonderful country. This was like a dream that never happened.”
Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].
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