I left off last time explaining how Zeitoun is the only “new release” book I’ve ever read. I zoomed through it in eight days, since I had checked it out from the local library (the book was sold out everywhere from Christmas until about a week ago — but I hadn’t had a library card since I was a kid, so that’s fun). My main reason for reading the book was to get a sense of what happened to New Orleans and the people who called the city home. Even though the book was written from the perspective of a single family, I thought it would still feel epic in scope (it didn’t).
I did enjoy learning about the Zeitoun family though. Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Syrian American man who settled in New Orleans after about a decade of living and working at sea. A friend introduced him to his wife Kathy, a Louisiana native who was raised Southern Baptist but had converted to Islam on her own. Kathy has a son from a previous marriage, and she and Zeitoun (as everyone calls Abdulrahman) have three daughters together. In my opinion, Eggers’s focus on this quintessential “American” family is the strongest aspect of the book. The result was that I learned more about Islam than I had ever known before.
It was especially interesting to see why Kathy converted. Her best friend Yuko (a Japanese American) first made the switch from Christianity to Islam, and eventually it began to make sense to Kathy as well.
“[Kathy] had no idea, for instance, that the Qur’an was filled with the same people as the Bible – Moses, Mary, Abraham, Pharaoh, even Jesus. She hadn’t known that Muslims consider the Qur’an the fourth book of God to His messengers, after the Old Testament…the Psalms…and the New Testament. The fact that Islam acknowledged these books was revelatory for her. The fact that the Qur’an repeatedly reaches out to the other, related faiths, knocked her flat” (p. 71).
“She was frustrated that she hadn’t known any of this, that she’d been blind to the faith of a billion or so people. How could she not know these things?” (p. 76)
I felt just as frustrated! That part about the Qur’an being the fourth book of God was news to me, and I’m sure it would be to most Americans practicing (or raised under) some denomination of Christianity. It’s even more odd when I recall that I went to high school with Muslim students, and at one point they even gave a short presentation to classes to encourage mutual understanding and tolerance (not that there were many outward displays of bigotry at the suburban Detroit school).
Kathy learned that Mohammad wasn’t the Islamic god (he was just a messenger), Qur’an simply means “Recitation,” and Muslims are just as different as the various types of people who identify as Christians. Meanwhile her Southern Baptist preacher scolded the congregation for not giving more money at collection time. And when Kathy spoke to him about how she was considering a conversion to Islam, the preacher said she was being tempted by the devil. Later at church, he brought her on stage and publicly humiliated her over the issue. That was Kathy’s breaking point.
“This man, preaching to a thousand impressionable and trusting parishioners, didn’t know, or didn’t care, that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity were not-so-distantly related branches of the same monotheistic, Abrahamic faith. And to dismiss all of Islam with a playground sound? Kathy could not be part of what that man was preaching” (p. 76).
Kathy was also tiring of the Southern Baptist claim to ultimate knowledge. She sought something more humble and noble.
“The various doubts of the imams* were comforting, and drew her closer. [...] She liked Islam’s sense of personal responsibility, its bent toward social justice. Most of all, though, she liked the sense of dignity and purity embodied by the Muslim women she knew” (pp. 76-77). (*An imam is an Islamic religious leader)
All of this sounded refreshing amid the recent flashes of fundamentalist Islam and Christianity — the former in the Middle East and the latter in the U.S. But I soon saw that, like the other monotheistic religions, even liberal Islam is susceptible to irrationality and blatantly reliant on a personified God.
Consistently throughout the book, Zeitoun and Kathy thank God, pray to God, and abandon their reason to the wisdom of God. Zeitoun stays in New Orleans during and after Katrina in part because he feels that God wants him to be there to help the people (and dogs) in need. But in a way, it was a justification for his own stubbornness, not wanting to leave his property, not wanting to be stuck with four displaced females, not wanting to miss an opportunity to live up to his famous older brother (the brother was a decorated ocean swimmer in Syria, who later died in a car accident).
Never do they admit the chaos, randomness and coincidence that dominate every aspect of the story. The individual has no control whatsoever, but at the same time no one is in charge. Yes, Zeitoun did good things, but he almost ended up dead (or close to it — I won’t give away that part!).
There are a few other points from the book I’d like to discuss, but those will have to wait until a future post.
Similar Posts:
- On Reading a ‘New Release’ Book (February 6, 2010)
- Time for a Long Break (July 13, 2010)
- Vote for the 100 Best Beach Books Ever at NPR.org (July 15, 2009)
