Zeitoun by Dave Eggers Page A

at home they would have lost everything.
    They talked about what would become of the house, of the city. They knew the house would have to be gutted, all the insulation andwiring replaced, the plaster and Sheetrock and paint and wallpaper. Everything, down to the studs, was gone. And if there was this much water Uptown, there was more in other neighborhoods. He thought of them—the houses near the lake and the houses near the levees. They didn’t stand a chance.
    As they talked, Zeitoun realized his phone was dying. Without electricity, they both knew, when his battery was gone there would be no reliable way to call out.
    “Better go,” he said.
    “Please leave,” she said. “Tomorrow.”
    “No, no,” he said, but even as he spoke, he was reconsidering. He had not anticipated being confined to this house for long. He knew there was enough food for a week or more, but now the situation would present a greater strain than he had planned.
    “Tell the kids I said goodnight,” he said.
    She said she would.
    He turned off his phone to conserve what power it had left.
    Kathy was still driving. She’d exhausted all means of diversion and was about to go back to her brother’s house when her phone rang again. It was Adnan. He was in Baton Rouge with his wife Abeer, he said, and they had no place to stay.
    “Where’d you stay last night?” Kathy asked.
    “In the car,” he said, sounding apologetic and ashamed.
    “Oh my God,” she said. “Let me see what I can do.”
    She planned to ask Mary Ann and Patty once she got back to the house. It would be crowded, but there was no way a pregnant woman should be sleeping in a car when there was enough room at her family’s house.
    *    *    *
    When Kathy returned to Andy’s, it was ten o’clock and the rooms were dark. All the kids, save Nademah, were asleep in the car. She roused them and walked quietly into the house. After the kids were settled in their sleeping bags, Mary Ann appeared and confronted her.
    “Where were you all day?”
    “Out,” Kathy said. “Trying to stay out of the way.”
    “Do you know how expensive gas is?” Mary Ann said.
    “Excuse me?” Kathy said. “I didn’t know you were paying for my gas.”
    Kathy was exasperated, defeated. In the house, they were made to feel burdensome; now she was being scolded for leaving. She vowed to herself to get through the night and think of a new plan the next day. Maybe she could drive to Phoenix to stay with Yuko. It was a ludicrous idea, to travel fifteen hundred miles when her blood relatives lived fifty miles from New Orleans, but she’d run to Yuko’s house before and could do so again.
    The tension was bad enough already, but for Adnan and Abeer’s sake, Kathy had to ask. After all, Mary Ann knew them; she’d met Adnan and Abeer many times. Couldn’t they stay for one night?
    “Absolutely not,” Mary Ann said.
    On the dark second floor, Zeitoun held a flashlight between his teeth, sifting through the pile of belongings he’d salvaged. He shelved the books he could. He boxed the certificates and pictures. He found pictures of his children when they were smaller, pictures from a vacation they’d all taken to Spain, pictures from their trip to Syria. He organized them, found a plastic bag, put them safely inside and then re-boxed them.
    In another, older box he came upon another photo, sepia-toned and in a rickety frame, and paused. He hadn’t seen it in years. He and hisbrother Luay and sister Zakiya were playing with their brother Mohammed, eighteen years older. They were all wrestling with him in the bedroom Zeitoun and Ahmad and all the younger boys had shared in Jableh. There little Abdulrahman was, on the far right, maybe five years old, his tiny fingers swallowed by Mohammed’s huge hand.

    Zeitoun stared at his brother’s electric smile. Mohammed had everything then. He
was
everything, the most famous and accomplished athlete in Syrian history. He was a long-distance