Frequently Asked Questions About Zeitoun
The following questions and answers have for the most part
been culled fromprevious interviews. Some questions and answers have popped up during readings
and signings, and we felt it helpful to provide the answers here.
Q. Is this book nonfiction?
Dave Eggers: It is. That’s my background. My degree is in journalism, and that’s what I did for a living for a long while I was a feature writer for Esquire so I still have that instinct that says to follow a story if it seems like it hasn’t been fully told. I started on the book in 2006, about a year after Katrina, and because there is so much information about the storm and the aftermath, we could tell the story with enough verifiable information to call it nonfiction. And because most of the book is from the Zeitouns’ point of view, and because we started so soon after the hurricane, their memories were very sharp. Early on, we made a master calendar — when the water came up around the Zeitoun house, when he was arrested, when he was transferred to the prison in St. Gabriel. And then we were able to independently corroborate all the dates and places and measurements. Again, there were so many journalists in the city, and there have been so many exhaustive studies done afterward. So if Zeitoun said he saw a downed helicopter one day, I could find out online or through other journalists where that helicopter was and when it crashed. Then if Zeitoun wasn’t 100% certain where he saw it, I could show him a photo of the crash and say, Was it this helicopter and on this day? And he would then be sure. That made working in a strictly nonfiction environment much easier than it would have been for the war in southern Sudan, where for many years there was no news coming out of the area at all.
Q: What kind of independent research and interviews did you do?
DE: I’m a little bit obsessive about research, so I spent three years gathering as much information as I could. I started with photographing and videotaping the Amtrak/Greyhound station that became Camp Greyhound, and went there a number of times with Zeitoun, so he could show me where he was held, where he was strip-searched, where he was questioned and jailed. On a number of occasions, Zeitoun and I videotaped the exact routes he took on any given day with his canoe. We examined the homes where he saved people, where he fed dogs, visited his old office, the gas station where he saw the armed men. We visited every place mentioned in the book a number of times. Because a lot of the book is about his life growing up in Syria, I flew to Damascus and drove along the coast to Jableh, where he grew up, and I stayed in his old house with his brother and nephew, who still live there. I met a dozen or so of his relatives in Syria, and we were able to talk about his life as a boy and young man, and what they all went through, not knowing where Zeitoun was after the storm. After that I went to Malaga, Spain, where Zeitoun’s brother Ahmed lives. He’s a technophile and has amazing records of what happened during and after the storm. I found the police officers who arrested Zeitoun too. Donald Lima and Ralph Gonzales were both listed on the arrest record, and I tracked them down with help from an investigator. Donald Lima was living in Shreveport when I found him. I drove to Shreveport from New Orleans and I surprised him at his home without advance warning or a phone call. I didn’t feel like I could give him warning, because he might not want to talk to me. But when I showed up, I assured him I would hear his side of the story, and we spent three hours in his kitchen talking about what happened. I also found and talked to Ralph Gonzales, another officer on the arrest record. He’s a longtime police officer in New Mexico and we spoke by phone for an hour. In both cases, with Gonzales and Lima, it was hugely helpful to hear their sides of the story. It was clear from both that racism played no part in their arrest of Zeitoun. They were both adamant that they followed procedure, and they were both regretful that Zeitoun and others did so much time behind bars without legal representation. But of course that part of the process wasn’t their responsibility. In addition to these interviews, I spoke to a number of lawyers, former public defenders, private attorneys ‹ a dozen lawyers involved in all aspects of the post-storm legal system. I spoke to neighbors, relatives, Amtrak employees, soldiers, tenants, clients, workers, friends. The usual reporting that one would do on such a story.
Q: Did you visit Hunt Correctional Facility?
DE: I did. I wasn’t sure that they would allow me to tour the prison if they knew exactly what I was writing about (those imprisoned there after the storm without a trial) so I wrote to them asking to tour their educational facilities. They allowed me to visit, and while inside, I was able to see enough of the prison and the conditions there to write knowledgably about the workings of the institution.
Q. How did you first meet the Zeitouns?
DE: At McSweeney’s we publish a series of books called Voice of Witness, where we use oral history as a window into human rights crises. Back in 2005, right after Hurricane Katrina, a group came together in New Orleans and Houston and elsewhere, and they interviewed New Orleanians about their experiences before, during and after the storm. The book became Voices from the Storm, edited by Chris Ying and Lola Vollen, and one of the narrators in that book was Abdulrahman Zeitoun.
Right after the book came out, I was in New Orleans to visit the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts — this incredible high school for the arts — and while I was in town I met up with Abdulrahman and his wife Kathy. We started talking, and pretty soon it was clear that there was a lot more to his story than we’d been able to cover in Voices from the Storm.
His family’s story presents a very unique intersection of what happened during one of the worst natural disasters in American history and the problematic tendrils of the war on terror. The dysfunctional criminal-justice system, a terrorism-focused military, the Bush years — I think that what happened to Zeitoun could only have happened with the intersection of all of these forces. Wrongful incarceration is an interest of mine, so it touched me on a personal level.
Q. How involved were the Zeitouns in the process?
DE: We worked on the book together for a long time, and they were involved throughout the process. With a book like this, I think you get the most accuracy when you involve your subjects as much as possible. So I did my own independent research and interviews, and then, when I was finished with certain chapters, I would send those sections to Abdulrahman and Kathy, and they would make sure that what I wrote was accurate. I think I sent the manuscript to the Zeitouns for six or seven reads. They caught little inaccuracies each time. They have to live with the book, of course, as much as I do, so I needed their approval. With What Is the What and with this book, I consider the book as much theirs as mine.
Q. Why tell a story about Katrina now, five years after it’s over?
DE: What happened in New Orleans will take decades to wrap our heads around, I think, and these books help us along that process. I don’t know if Zeitoun is appropriately timed or not, but I knew that even if it were 2015, it’s a story that’s important to get out there‹ a necessary part of the mosaic. What happened in New Orleans is one of the most significant events in United States history, and the wounds are still very raw. Our understanding and processing of what was revealed in our response to the storm will take years and years.
Q. Where will the proceeds from this book go?
DE: A portion of the proceeds of the book will go to the Zeitouns themselves. They have five kids, and I wanted to be sure that they would all be taken care of for college. And we’re planning to give some to those arrested with Zeitoun. The state of Louisiana is unlikely to compensate these men for their wrongful conviction, so we’ll do what we can. The brunt of the proceeds, though, will go to the Zeitoun Foundation. The Foundation is a very simple grant-giving operation. It will take the proceeds of the book and then distribute them to a number of nonprofits, most of them working in New Orleans. I was able to visit a number of them recently and they’re doing fantastic work. And we’re at a juncture in the recovery of New Orleans that a lot of us elsewhere in the country might assume that all is well again in New Orleans, the recovery is complete, etc. But this is the time when they need new funds, an influx of interest and support. So we’re hoping to contribute to the ongoing work of Rebuilding Together, the Porch, The Green Project, the Innocence Project, and others.
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