Zeitoun (12 page)

“Brand new truck,” Frank said. He had parked it on Fontainebleau, thinking that because the road was a foot or so higher than Vincennes, the truck would be spared. They made their way up six blocks to where Frank had parked the truck, and then Zeitoun heard Frank’s quick intake of breath. The truck was under five feet of water and had migrated half a block. Like his motorcycle, it was gone, a thing of the past.

“You want to get anything out of it?” Zeitoun asked.

Frank shook his head. “I don’t want to look at it. Let’s go.”

They continued on. Soon they saw an older man, a doctor Zeitoun knew, on the second-floor porch of a white house. They paddled into the yard and asked the doctor if he needed help. “No, I’ve got somebody coming,” he said. He had his housekeeper with him, he said, and they were well set up for the time being.

A few doors down, Zeitoun and Frank came upon a house with a large white cloth billowing from the second-floor window. When they got closer, they saw a couple, a husband and wife in their seventies, leaning out of the window.

“You surrender?” Frank asked.

The man smiled.

“You want to get out?” Zeitoun asked.

“Yes, we do,” the man said.

They couldn’t safely fit anyone else in the canoe, so Zeitoun and Frank promised to send someone back to the house as soon as they got to Claiborne. They assumed there would be activity there, that if anywhere would have a police or military presence, it would be Claiborne, the main thoroughfare nearby.

“We’ll be right back,” Zeitoun said.

As they were paddling away from the couple’s house, they heard a faint female voice. It was a kind of moan, weak and tremulous.

“You hear that?” Zeitoun asked.

Frank nodded. “It’s coming from that direction.”

They paddled toward the sound and heard the voice again.

“Help.”

It was coming from a one-story house on Nashville.

They coasted toward the front door and heard the voice again: “Help me.”

Zeitoun dropped his paddle and jumped into the water. He held his breath and swam to the porch. The steps came quicker than he thought. He jammed his knee against the masonry and let out a gasp. When he stood, the water was up to his neck.

“You okay?” Frank asked.

Zeitoun nodded and made his way up the steps.

“Hello?” the voice said, now hopeful.

He tried the front door. It was stuck. Zeitoun kicked the door. It wouldn’t move. He kicked again. No movement. With the water now to his chest, he ran his body against the door. He did it again. And again. Finally it gave.

*    *    *

Inside he found a woman hovering above him. She was in her seventies, a large woman, over two hundred pounds. Her patterned dress was spread out on the surface of the water like a great floating flower. Her legs dangled below. She was holding on to a bookshelf.

“Help me,” she said.

Zeitoun talked gently to the woman, assuring her that she would be taken care of. He knew that in all likelihood she had been there, clinging to her furniture, for twenty-four hours or more. An elderly woman like this would have no chance of swimming to safety, much less have the strength to cut a hole through her roof. At least the water was warm. She might not have survived.

Zeitoun pulled her out the front door and caught a glimpse of Frank in the canoe. His jaw had gone slack, his eyes disbelieving.

No one knew what to do next. It would be very difficult to fit a woman of her size into the canoe under normal circumstances. And lifting her into it would require more than two men. Even if they could lift her and fit her inside, they couldn’t possibly fit all three of them. The canoe would certainly capsize.

He and Frank had a quick whispered conversation. They had no choice but to leave her and find help. They would paddle quickly to Claiborne and flag down a boat. They told the woman the plan. She was unhappy to be left alone again, but there was no choice.

They reached Claiborne in a few minutes and immediately saw what they were looking for: a fan boat. Zeitoun had never seen one in person, but they were familiar from movies. This was a military model, loud,
with a great fan anchored perpendicularly to the rear. It was headed directly toward them.

Zeitoun thought it was very lucky to have found another craft so quickly, and he was filled with something like pride, knowing that he had promised help and could now deliver it.

He and Frank positioned their canoe in the path of the boat and waved their arms. The fan boat came straight for them, and when it was close, Zeitoun could see that there were four or five uniformed officers aboard; he wasn’t sure if they were police or military, but he was very happy to see them. He waved, and Frank waved, both of them yelling “Stop!” and “Help!”

But the fan boat did not stop. It swung around the canoe holding Zeitoun and Frank, not even slowing down, and continued down Claiborne. The men aboard the fan boat barely glanced at them.

The fan boat’s wake nearly tipped their canoe. Zeitoun and Frank sat still, gripping either side until the waves subsided. They hardly had time to exchange incredulous looks when another boat came their way. Again it was a fan boat, also with four military personnel aboard, and again Zeitoun and Frank waved and called for help. Again the fan boat swung around them and continued without a word.

This happened repeatedly over the next twenty minutes. Ten of these vessels, all staffed by soldiers or police officers, ignored their canoe and their calls for assistance. Where were these boats going, what were they looking for, if not for residents of the city asking for help? It defied belief.

Finally a different sort of boat approached. It was a small fishing boat manned by two young men. Though Zeitoun and Frank were
disheartened and unsure if anyone would stop, they gave it a try. They stood in the canoe, they waved, they yelled. This boat stopped.

“We need help,” Frank said.

“Okay, let’s go,” the men on the boat said.

The young men threw a line to Zeitoun, who tied it to the canoe. The motorboat towed Zeitoun and Frank to the woman’s house, and once they were close, the young men cut the engine and coasted toward the porch.

Zeitoun jumped into the water again and swam to her door. The woman was exactly as they’d left her, in her foyer, floating near the ceiling.

Now they only had to figure out how to get her into the fishing boat. She couldn’t lift herself into the boat; that wasn’t an option. She couldn’t drop down into the water for leverage. It was too deep and she could not swim.

“You have a ladder, ma’am?” one of the young men asked.

She did. She directed them to the detached garage at the end of the driveway. Zeitoun dropped into the water, swam to the garage, and retrieved it.

When he brought it back, he set it on the ground and against the boat. The plan was that the woman would let go of the bookshelf, grab the ladder, put her feet onto it, and climb up until she was above the boat and able to step into the hull.

Zeitoun held the ladder while the two young men steadied it against the boat, ready to receive her. It seemed an ingenious plan.

But she couldn’t climb the ladder. She had a bad leg, she said, and couldn’t put pressure on it. It took a certain degree of agility, and she was eighty years old, weakened by staying awake for twenty-four hours while
floating near her ceiling, thinking only that she might drown in her own home.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

There was only one option now, they decided. They would use the ladder as a sort of gurney. They would prop one end on the side of the fishing boat, and one of the young men would stand on the porch, holding the other side. They would then have to lift it high enough to get her over the lip of the boat, and far enough in that she could roll into the hull.

Zeitoun realized that two men, one on either end of the ladder, would not be enough to lift a woman of over two hundred pounds. He knew he would have to push from below. So when the two young men were in position, and the woman was ready, Zeitoun took a deep breath and went under. From below the surface, he could see the woman let go of the bookshelf and grab the ladder. It was awkward, but she managed to place herself atop it, as if it were a kind of raft.

As she put weight on the ladder, Zeitoun positioned his shoulders under it and pushed up. The motion was akin to a shoulder-press machine he’d once used at a gym. He straightened his legs, and as he did, the ladder rose from the water until he saw light breaking the surface, until he felt the air on his face and was finally able to exhale.

The woman rolled into the bed of the boat. It was not a graceful landing, but she managed to sit up. Though she was wet and breathing heavily, she was unhurt.

Zeitoun shuddered as he watched her recover. It was not right to watch a woman of her age suffer like this. The situation had stolen her dignity, and it pained him to bear witness.

Zeitoun climbed back into the canoe. Frank, smiling and shaking his head, stretched out his hand from the fishing boat.

“That was something,” Frank said.

Zeitoun shook his hand and smiled.

The men sat in silence, letting the woman determine when it was time to go. They knew it was an impossible thing for her to see her house like this, untold damage and loss within. At her age, and with the years it would take to restore the home, she would likely never return. They gave her a moment. Finally she nodded and they arranged their convoy. Zeitoun was alone in the canoe, being towed behind. He was soaked and exhausted.

With Frank directing the fishing boat, they made their way toward the couple who had been waving the white cloth. On the way there, they heard another cry for help.

It was another older couple in their seventies, waving from their second-story window.

“You ready to leave?” Frank asked.

“We are,” the man in the window said.

The young fishermen brought the caravan to the window, and the couple, fit and agile, lowered themselves into it.

With six people now aboard the fishing boat, they arrived at the white-flag house. The couple living there lowered themselves down, making the number in the fishing boat eight. The young men had seen a temporary medical staging ground set up at the intersection of Napoleon and St. Charles, and they agreed that they would deliver the passengers there. It was time for Zeitoun and Frank to part ways with their companions. Frank stepped back into the canoe and said goodbye.

“Good luck with everything,” one of the young men said.

“You too,” Zeitoun said.

They had never exchanged names.

*    *    *

In Baton Rouge, Kathy was again driving to kill time, her car full of children. Needing distraction from the news on the radio—it was getting worse every hour—she stopped periodically at whatever stores or restaurants were open. Zeitoun had sounded so calm on the phone the previous night, before his phone had given out. But since then conditions in the city had devolved. She was hearing reports of unchecked violence, widespread chaos, thousands presumed dead. What was her lunatic husband doing there? She tried his phone again and again, hoping he had somehow found a way to charge it. She tried the home phone, in case the water had miraculously dropped below the phone box and the wiring was undamaged. She got nothing. The lines were dead.

On the radio, they were reporting that another ten thousand National Guardsmen were being sent to the region, about one-third of them directed to maintain order. There would soon be twenty-one thousand National Guard troops in the area, coming from all over the country—West Virginia, Utah, New Mexico, Missouri. How could her husband be so calm when every branch of the armed forces was scrambling?

She turned off the radio and tried Zeitoun again. Nothing. She knew she shouldn’t worry yet, but her mind took dark turns. If she was out of touch with her husband already, how would she know if anything was wrong? How would she know if he was alive, in danger, dead? She was getting ahead of herself. He was in no danger. The winds were gone, and now it was just water, placid water. And troops were on their way. No cause for worry.

Returning to her family’s house in Baton Rouge, she found her
mother there. She had come to deliver ice. She greeted all the kids and looked at Kathy.

“Why don’t you take off that thing and relax?” she said, pointing to Kathy’s hijab. “He’s not here. Be yourself.”

Kathy suppressed a dozen things she wanted to say, and instead channeled her rage into packing. She would take the kids and go to a motel, a shelter. Anywhere. Maybe to Arizona. It just wasn’t working in Baton Rouge. And it was all so much worse not knowing where Zeitoun was. Why did that man insist on staying? It was a cruel thing, really. He wanted to make sure that his family was safe, but Kathy, his wife, wasn’t afforded the same certainty. When they next spoke, she was determined to get him to leave the city. It didn’t matter anymore why he wanted to stay. Forget the house and property. Nothing could be worth it.

In New Orleans, Zeitoun was invigorated. He had never felt such urgency and purpose. In his first day in his flooded city, he had already assisted in the rescue of five elderly residents. There was a reason, he now knew, that he had remained in the city. He had felt compelled to stay by a power beyond his own reckoning. He was needed.

Zeitoun and Frank’s next stop was Zeitoun’s property, back on Claiborne at number 5010. He and Kathy had owned the home, a two-story residence, for five years. It was a rental unit, with four to six tenants at any given time.

When they arrived, they found Todd Gambino, one of Zeitoun’s tenants, on the front porch, a bottle of beer in his hand. Todd was a stout man in his late thirties, and had lived there as long as the Zeitouns had owned the building. He worked as a mechanic at a SpeeDee Oil Change and Tune-Up franchise most of the week, and had a part-time job delivering lost luggage for the airport. He was a
good tenant; they’d never had a late check or any sort of problem from him.

He stood up, incredulous, as Zeitoun approached.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked.