Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun is a harrowing true account of the experiences of the Zeitoun family, Abdulrahman, his wife Kathy and their four children, during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. Kathy and the children flee New Orleans as the storm approaches, and despite their protests Abdulrahman, or Zeitoun as he is known, remains in New Orleans. In the resulting devastation and chaos Zeitoun is arrested without a trial or a phone call and kept in a makeshift prison while his family in Phoenix are frantic with worry.

Eggers has crafted a narrative of immense pain and hope in delicate, simple prose. He introduces us to the Zeitouns, to their everyday familial routines, their business, the prejudices they face as Muslim-Americans, Abdulrahman’s childhood in Syria and his recollections of his family and Kathy’s conversion to Islam. It is impossible to not emotionally connect with them. Their story, both the banal and the extreme, is told in such a level-headed manner, Eggers lets the story unfold without enforcing his opinion or cramming the political implications of the events down the readers throat. Rather, the Zeitoun’s personal narrative is so strong and so emblematic of the culture of fear that there is no need to overstate it with elaborate prose styling.

He was conflicted about what he was seeing, a refracted version of his city, one where homes and trees were bisected and mirrored in this oddly calm body of water. The novelty of the new world brought forth the adventurer in him — he wanted to see it all, the whole city, what had become of it. But the builder in him thought of the damage, how long it would take to rebuild. Years, maybe a decade. He wondered if the world at large could already see what he was seeing, a disaster mythical in scale and severity.

Zeitoun’s experience in the aftermath of Katrina takes on a strange, apocalyptic, otherworldly tone. He paddles around in a canoe, feeding the neighbourhood dogs and rescuing trapped citizens. Perhaps it is just the dog-lover in me, but the passages of Zeitoun’s tender care for the abandoned dogs reduced me to tears. When Zeitoun found a litter of puppies shot multiple times by an unknown perpetrator, I was a sobbing mess.

“He tried to, at least. He lay there on Nademah’s bed, trying to relax. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the dogs. Who could shoot a dog? All those animals, needing, trusting. He tried, as always, to give the benefit of the doubt to whoever had done it. But if they could find their way to the dogs with guns and bullets, wouldn’t it be just as easy to feed them?”

The dog incident comes to parallel Zeitoun’s own experiences when he is arrested on suspicion of looting and theft. Brutality and violence when it would be just as easy to assist those in need. The efficiency of the National Guard in setting up these makeshifts prisons while residents were stranded and suffering without essentials is frightening. Where do their priorities lie? In rescuing people or protecting them from a largely imagined threat?

“This complex and exceedingly efficient government operation was completed while residents of New Orleans were trapped in attics and begging for rescue from rooftops and highway overpasses. The portable toilets were available and working at Camp Greyhound while there were no working bathrooms at the Convention Center and Superdome a few blocks away. Hundreds of cases of water and MREs were readily available for the guards and prisoners, while those stranded nearby were fighting for food and water.”

Kathy’s frantic panic when she can not get in contact with her husband is utterly devastating. I had to put the book down because I felt it all rather too intensely. Her worries, her concern for the children, the support (or not) of her family and close friends, and her resolute determination, courage and refusal to give up her search for her husband.

Zeitoun is a heart-wrenching and yet necessarily eye opening account of lives torn apart by the current climate of xenophobic fear and the fallibility of the government in a time of utter natural chaos. It is doubtful we will ever be able to fully comprehend what the Zeitoun’s went through during this traumatic upheaval of their lives, but Eggers provides a sincerely empathetic account of their ordeal.