Part 5 of Zeitoun is more of an epilogue. It starts off three years later in Fall 2008.
Weird things have been happening to Kathy. She thinks that she is losing her memory. She'll be doing something, and then she won't be able to remember what to do next or why shes doing it. She went to doctors for testing. One said she might have multiple sclerosis, but overall the tests suggested post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Since Zeitoun was released, the Zeitouns had stayed in seven different houses and apartments. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) gave them a trailer. This trailer caused more problems than it was worth. When they installed it, they didn't connect it to water or electricity. It was supported by cinder blocks four feet off the ground, do they couldn't get inside without steps. Even if it hadn't been so high up, they didn't have the keys to get inside! Kathy called FEMA and, after weeks if waiting, they delivered some stairs. They still didn't have any keys though. After another month went by, a FEMA inspector finally dropped of some keys. But when he saw the trailer he told them that it wasn't safe to use because it was leaning. FEMA wasn't really being very helpful.
By 2007, the Zeitouns still hadn't used the trailer. It had been in front of one of their properties for almost fourteen months. It was decreasing the value of the building. Kathy continued to call FEMA asking for it to be picked up but no one ever came. Finally, Kathy wrote a letter to the Times-Picayune telling the story of the trailer. The morning the letter ran, a FEMA official called to get the address and they took it away. I guess they either felt bad about causing so many problems for the Zeitouns, or they didn't want people knowing how unhelpful they had been.
The Zeitouns' problems never end. They didn't feel the need to sue anyone over Zeitoun's arrest, but their friends and family thought they should. Kathy found the name of the arresting officer (Donald Lima) and filed the lawsuit in his name. When their lawyer tried to contact Lima, he found that he wasn't a police officer anymore. The other officer, Ralph Gonzales, was from New Mexico. He was contacted and told his side if the story.
He was asked to go to New Orleans to help after Katrina. Gonzales was asked to help with a search of a house that was currently occupied by four men that had been suspected of looting and drug dealing. When they got to the house, the men were arrested. They didn't take any evidence, just arrested them and drove away. But if that was the reason they were arrested, why were the men told they were suspected of being al Qaeda?
When they finally found Lima, he told them that after making his rounds one day, he saw four men leaving a Walgreen's with stolen goods. They put the goods in a blue and white motor boat. (I remembered that Todd had found a blue and white motor boat and was using it to help people. Maybe the thieves abandoned it and that was why he had found it.). Since Lima had rescues with him, he couldn't pursue the boat. Two days later he saw the same motor boat outside a house on Claiborne (Zeitoun's property). He gathered a team and they went to arrest the men. Lima said that he wasn't sure what the men had stolen, he didn't see anything customarily sold by Walgreen's at the house, and no stolen items were recovered. This made no sense to me at all. If they didn't find any stolen items and if he wasn't sure it was the same men, then he shouldn't have arrested them!
Even more problems presented themselves a few days after Zeitoun was released. When Kathy and Zeitoun went to retrieve Zeitoun's wallet, the assistant district attorney told him that he couldn't have it back because it was still being used as "evidence". When they argued, he told them that they couldn't have it without the permission of the DA. When they walked out of the station, they saw the DA. Kathy asked him why they couldn't have the wallet back. The DA said there was nothing he could do. Kathy saw that there were reporters nearby so she said (loudly), "You arrested my husband in his own house, and now you won't give him his wallet back? What's going on here? What is wrong with this city?" (Eggers 326). This basically summed up what I felt while reading about the Zeitouns' hardships.
Everything that happened to the Zeitouns was completely unfair. It's unbelievable that something like this could happen. Kathy thinks that it is amazing (and I absolutely agree with her) that just calling someone's wife to let them know that they had seen their husband and that he was alive could be considered an act of heroism to the people he was kind to.
Overall, this was an excellent book. I learned a lot about Hurricane Katrina and it's aftermath that I didn't know before. If anyone asked asked me if they should read Zeitoun, I would definitely say yes!
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