Zeitoun

pronounced "Zay-toon"

I just finished a really good book by Dave Eggers  called Zeitoun. In a nutshell, Zeitoun is a nonfiction book that documents firsthand the experiences of suffering through Hurricane Katrina and the difficulties of being a Muslim in post-9/11 America.

Here are two passages from the book showing why you should read Zeitoun: 

Later, after kissing Zachary goodnight, Kathy lay down in Nademah’s bed and the girls arranged themselves around her, a mess of overlapping limbs and pillows.

“Who wants to start?” Kathy asked. 

Safiya began a story about Pokémon. The stories, which the girls told collaboratively, were often about Pokémon. After Aisha introduced the protagonist, Safiya provided the setting and central conflict, and Nademah took it from there. They continued, taking turns advancing the plot, until Aisha was alseep and Nademah and Safiya were drifting off. Kathy looked up to find Zeitoun in the doorway, leaning against the frame, watching them all. He did this often, just watching, taking it all in. The scene was almost too much, too beautiful. It was enough to burst a man’s heart wide open. (Eggers 49)

This passage brought me back to the night when I slept over with all of my cousins at their house in San Francisco. It honestly couldn’t have been that long ago, maybe five years ago, and after some solid ice cream eating, nerf gun shooting and games of sardines everyone went to bed. It being a cousin sleepover, we all were sleeping in the same room and no one went to bed right away. 

My cousins and I played the exact same game as Safiya, Aisha and Nademah did, except we substituted disgusting stories of explosive diarrhea and pee-filled rivers for tales about Pokémon. My uncle and aunt played with us too, until eventually we petered out and everyone fell asleep. 

Eggers’s writing in this passage recalled a flood of heart-warming memories and his ability to make me empathize made Abdulrahman Zeitoun’s struggles that much more meaningful. I also really like the writing in the last two sentences of the paragraph; Eggers does a good job of concision. 

Next passage:

In the end, Zeitoun spent ten years as a sailor. Aboard a ship called the Star Castor he saw the Persian Gulf, Japan, Australia, and Baltimore. Aboard the Capitan Elias, he saw Holland and Norway. He saw herds of humpbacks, breaching grey whales, schools of dolphins leading the ships to port. He saw the aurora borealis, meteor showers over tumbling black waves, night skies so clear the stars seemed within reach, hung from a ceiling by fishing wire. He served on the Nitsa, the Andromeda, he sailed all the way until 1988, when he landed in Houston and decided to explore inland. That brought him to Baton Rouge, and Baton Rouge brought him to Kathy, and Kathy brought him to Zachary and Nademah and Safiya and Aisha. (146)

This passage is an example of descriptive writing at its finest. Dave Eggers employs repetition, “he saw,” to emphasize the broad scope of his travels and elevates his already amazing nautical adventures to a surreal level. 

My favorite phrase is “meteor showers over tumbling black waves.” Eggers’s description in the middle of the passage reminds me of Tobias Wolff’s writing style. Wolff is one of my favorite authors and part of the reason why his writing is exceptional is that his descriptive writing is very “in the moment,” just like Eggers’s. 

Eggers again uses repetition in his writing to convey a sense of destiny. His repeated use of the word “and,” in the last sentence, suggests that Zeitoun’s nights on the open sea were not aimless and wandering but that he was on a predestined path towards his wife and beloved kids.