Every anger, every hatred that he had for anybody else, he focused it on me. And then, after that, he started focusing it on the children as well. I can tolerate it if it's for me, but when it comes to the children, no. After 17 years of marriage, Kathy said, she took her children and left Abdulrahman the night in February that he beat their year-old daughter because she had removed her headscarf and refused to hand over her cellphone. Kathy Zeitoun said she and her ex-husband appeared to be in a downward spiral.
They fought over their 11 properties, over bills and money. He wanted their daughter to wear a headscarf; Kathy refused to make her do that, and refused to punish her if she didn't. And every time Kathy stood up to him, he seemed to grow even angrier, she said.
I think that made him angrier more than anything else. The first time Kathy Zeitoun called the police was in March , when, she said, her then-husband beat her and threatened to kill her in front of their children. She said she felt pressure from the book's fame, her business reputation and the Islamic community to reduce the domestic-abuse charges.
Eventually, the charges were reduced to negligent injuring. The couple divorced in February The next time the police were involved, the July tire-iron incident, Kathy Zeitoun said, she realized her life was in danger and that she would not reduce the charges under any circumstances. The fallout from the Islamic community, however, was tough, she said. Zeitoun Downfall Words 5 Pages.
This man, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, was so popular, a novel was written about his heroic actions during Hurricane Katrina. Zeitoun was a man that was nationally recognized as a hero for his actions during Hurricane Katrina in Zeitoun is infamously known for paddling around New Orleans in his canoe, rescuing many civilians from their flooded homes and bringing them to safety, and later being wrongly arrested by government officials due to his Islamic faith.
However, much controversy was caused after Zeitoun was arrested for abuse charges against his wife. Some nights he thinks of the faces, the people who arrested him, who jailed him, who shuttled him between cages like an animal, who transported him like luggage. But when Zeitoun was carted off there, he and his three companions found themselves surrounded by 80 or so men with assault rifles and dogs, a mixture of National Guardsmen, prison wardens and soldiers, some of whom had recently been serving in Iraq and who seemed to approach the situation in New Orleans with a war-zone mentality.
Another soldier said as he passed: "Taliban. It was like a dagger blow for Zeitoun, for himself personally and for his vision of America, the country where he had come to live as a young merchant seaman from Syria and which he had always believed was a land of fairness and opportunity.
He had come initially in search of work, never expecting to stay, but he then met Kathy, a local Louisiana woman who had converted to Islam four years previously. They had built a life together, grown their construction business and had children. And now here he was being called a terrorist. It was very hurtful. These guys wanted revenge on us, no matter what. He was kept penned up at the bus station for three days and nights, and interviewed by officers from homeland security who seemed to think they had caught a big fish.
He says now that whenever he drives by the Greyhound station — or Camp Greyhound as it was dubbed — dark thoughts enter his mind. What dark thoughts? The memory of people refusing to help. Imagine you see a doctor and you shout at him, 'Can you help me? How would you feel? While Zeitoun was incarcerated, first at Camp Greyhound and then in a maximum-security prison, Kathy was, as she puts it, "battling her own demons".
One of the gross injustices against them both was that Zeitoun was allowed no phone call, which left her in mounting despair. For two weeks she had no word from her husband, concluding in the end that he must be dead. Then, on 19 September, she learned of his detention from a missionary who called her after having seen Zeitoun in prison. She dashed back to the city from Texas, where she had been staying with friends.
The nadir came for her when she tried to find out the address of the courthouse where he was due to appear, charged with looting. Court officials told her they couldn't divulge such information as it was private. I cried harder then than I did at any other time. I felt like I was a little kid again — with no say-so, no rights, no voice. I felt lost. The others fared worse: Dayoob, Gambino and Ronnie spent five, six and eight months in prison respectively, despite Zeitoun's efforts to prise them out.
Eventually, the charges against all four of them were dropped. 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 so, there were so many aspects of it that interested me. 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 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. He has keys to every one of them. Talk about Nasser and Todd and, from your research, what happened that day. 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. 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. And, you know, Todd Gambino did many months in prison, and Nasser did many months in prison. And so, it was a complete meltdown of the system, unfortunately.
Stay with us. And we go to Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun themselves. Abdulrahman is known in New Orleans by his last name, Zeitoun. I spoke to Zeitoun and his wife Kathy yesterday. Of course, life had already changed. You were alone there trying to help people, your family in Baton Rouge. And I got to the house, and I go to the bathroom, and I open the water, and I see the water running. And I jump, take a shower right away. Jump in the shower, because I have water running.
And he got out, and someone started talking to him. And the guys keep talking and come closer slowly to the house. And I see five, six guys, military, with the policemen, jump in the house with all the weapon. I can ask him if I can get the note. You know, have a, like, military, like, ready -— like these guys coming for —- like prepared for war. And brought us to St. Charles and Napoleon. As soon we got there, we have like, every one of us, being five, six guys jump on him and tied him down.
Like I saw something like only thing you see it in the movies. I feel something not good.
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