Zeitoun

This weekend I took Jamie across the river to North Bergen, where my parents have a little apartment. It was a strangely relaxing weekend, and for the first time in months I lost myself in a book. When I'm stressed, the first thing to go is my attention span. I'll read the same paragraph over and over again before realizing I have to make a mundane phone call or wash my hair or look at Facebook. At night time, I'll muddle through three pages or so before falling asleep (don't stress and tiredness go hand in hand?).

And so it's been, this hard cover book heartily recommended to me by dear friends, my constant companion since December.

Zeitoun is a non-fiction account of Hurricane Katrina by Dave Eggers. His story is told through the eyes of a man of Syrian descent, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, who is a small business owner in New Orleans who decides not to evacuate with his family, but rather stay back to take care of his properties and home. What happens next some might guess. There are floods, and there is great sadness. There is also political outrage. I'm not a spoiler, and so I won't treat this as a shabbily written high school book review and detail the plot. What I will say is that I'm grateful for this beautiful story that shook me out of my reading stupor with a poetic vengeance and made me think about far more than Katrina's aftermath. I also thank the computer chess game which occupied my son for more than a couple of chapters.