40 Fun Facts About Zeitoun

After Katrina flooded New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun rescued neighbors while paddling which secondhand boat?

Canoe trips through the drowned streets let him ferry neighbors to higher ground and hand out fresh water. The aluminum craft, sixteen feet long, went missing after his arrest.

Soldiers at the makeshift jail holding Abdulrahman Zeitoun said he belonged to the Taliban and which other network?

Al-Qaeda was the label a passing soldier threw at the four caged men when they asked why they were being held. Some of the troops there had recently served in Iraq.

The makeshift jail where Abdulrahman Zeitoun was caged stood in the New Orleans station of which bus company?

Greyhound gave the jail its nickname, Camp Greyhound: sixteen chain-link cages topped with razor wire under the station canopies. About 1,200 people passed through it.

Which American writer, known for the memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, wrote the book Zeitoun?

Dave Eggers spent about three years interviewing the family, and let them read six or seven drafts of the manuscript before it went to press.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun, the New Orleans businessman at the heart of Zeitoun, grew up in which Middle Eastern country?

Syria is where he was raised, in a large family on the Mediterranean coast. He came to the United States in search of work and never expected to stay.

Besides rescuing neighbors, Abdulrahman Zeitoun crossed flooded New Orleans to feed which abandoned animals?

Dogs trapped in flooded houses got food from him on his daily rounds, alongside the water and supplies he carried to stranded people.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun was held on $75,000 bail for which crime, supposedly committed at a house he owned himself?

Looting was the charge, although he was the landlord of the house where he was seized. It was eventually dropped, along with the charges against his three companions.

The surname Zeitoun, which gives the Katrina book its title, comes from the Arabic word for which fruit's tree?

Olive trees lie behind a whole family of names, from Zeitoun and Zaytoun to the Maltese town of Żejtun. In New Orleans he was known to everyone simply by the surname.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun said the wire cages at the New Orleans bus station reminded him of which American-run prison camp?

Guantánamo Bay came to his mind at once. The fences stood fifteen or twenty feet high, and prisoners slept on the bare asphalt with no mattresses.

Which director of The Silence of the Lambs announced plans in 2009 to turn the book Zeitoun into a film?

Jonathan Demme said the idea came to him while he was staring at the book's cover. Five years later the film was still stuck in development.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun held keys to hundreds of New Orleans homes because he and Kathy ran which kind of business?

Painting and contracting was the trade, run by the couple as partners. He stayed through the storm partly to watch over his clients' houses.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun's house flooded only after Katrina had passed, when which defenses around New Orleans gave way?

Levees gave way and the water kept rising, so he carried what he could upstairs and then took to the streets by boat.

Zeitoun reads like a novel and has been called one on air, but the book belongs to which category?

Nonfiction is the right shelf: its author checked the couple's account against the available documents and interviews, including with the two officers named on the arrest report.

Many ration meals handed to the devout Abdulrahman Zeitoun in the bus-station cages contained which forbidden meat?

Pork or ham seemed to turn up in nearly every meal, so he and a fellow Muslim prisoner often went without.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun was arrested by police working alongside armed troops from which part-time American military force?

National Guard soldiers and police burst in carrying M16s, and one demanded his identity card. The driver who took him away said his unit had come from Indiana.

Before settling in Louisiana, Abdulrahman Zeitoun spent years travelling the world in which line of work?

Merchant sailor was his trade for years, loading and unloading cargo on ships around the world. He first reached the United States aboard a tanker.

Kathy Zeitoun learned her husband was alive only when which visitor to his prison broke the rules to phone her?

A missionary handing out Bibles took down her number and rang her on 19 September, about two weeks after the arrest.

Years after Katrina, Kathy Zeitoun was diagnosed with symptoms of which condition, including memory loss and dizziness?

Post-traumatic stress was the diagnosis. For years the children also insisted on cramming into their parents' bed at night rather than sleeping in their own.

As Katrina approached, Kathy Zeitoun first drove the children to stay with relatives in which Louisiana city?

Baton Rouge was her hometown, yet she did not stay long: she soon moved on with the children to a close friend's home in another state.

Kathy Zeitoun and her children waited for news of Abdulrahman at a friend's home in which southwestern state?

Arizona, in the Phoenix area, is where she filed a missing-person report with the Red Cross once his daily calls stopped.

Which San Francisco publishing house, founded by the book's own author, first brought out Zeitoun in 2009?

McSweeney's sent the book to press in mid-May and had it on sale about six weeks later; the printer was in Canada.

Which federal department phoned Kathy Zeitoun to say it had never had any interest in her jailed husband?

Homeland Security officers had already questioned him at the bus station on his first day there and walked away, saying they had nothing on him.

After three days in the bus-station cages, Abdulrahman Zeitoun was bused to which Louisiana prison in St. Gabriel?

Hunt Correctional Center held him for about twenty more days without trial. Inmates there who had been processed in the normal way had rights he was denied.

Medical staff at the bus-station jail would not stop to treat Abdulrahman Zeitoun's infected cut on which body part?

Foot pain was only the start: once in prison he felt a sharp ache in his side as well, and still saw no doctor.

Which legal right with a Latin name was denied to the 1,200 people held in the makeshift jail where Zeitoun was caged?

Habeas corpus, the right to have a judge rule on a detention, was set aside. Most of those held were African-American, picked up as the city's courts collapsed.

Before Zeitoun, its author told the life story of Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng in which book?

What Is the What set the pattern: its proceeds paid for a secondary school in Deng's hometown, and the money from Zeitoun likewise went to a foundation.

The Zeitoun family home stood in which New Orleans neighborhood, a few miles from downtown and the Superdome?

Uptown stayed far quieter than the chaos on the news. The book's author called what Zeitoun saw there almost post-apocalyptic: silent streets and very few people.

Which New Orleans mayor ordered the city's first mandatory evacuation the day before Katrina made landfall?

Ray Nagin signed the order on the Sunday morning. Zeitoun stayed anyway, to watch over his house, his job sites and his rental properties.

Kathy Zeitoun, who converted to Islam before meeting her husband, was raised in which Christian tradition?

Southern Baptist was her upbringing. A childhood friend who had converted first introduced her to Islam after Kathy's first marriage failed.

In which Mediterranean fishing town, home to a famous Sufi mystic's tomb, did Abdulrahman Zeitoun grow up?

Jableh was still a small fishing town when he was a boy. The book's author travelled there to meet the brothers and sisters who still live in it.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun's brother Ahmad, whose careful records helped shape the book, lives in which European country?

Spain is home to Ahmad, and the book's author flew there to interview him. He proved a wealth of information for the chapters set far from New Orleans.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun's late brother Mohammed, whose story runs through the book, was a champion in which sport?

Swimming made Mohammed famous: the fastest in Syria, he raced around the world and was fêted by kings and presidents before dying young.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun was arrested at a rental house he owned on which New Orleans avenue, where the phone still worked?

Claiborne Avenue was where he rang his wife each day. A stranger named Ronnie, who had only asked for shelter in the house, was arrested along with him.

The author of Zeitoun found the family's story through which oral-history book series about human rights crises?

Voice of Witness sent interviewers to record people who had fled the flood, and one of the narrators in the resulting book was Abdulrahman Zeitoun.

Zeitoun won which 2010 prize, run by the Before Columbus Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to multicultural writing?

American Book Award honors came in 2010, the year the book also took the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Its author took no payment, passing the proceeds to a foundation.

Lights at the bus-station jail that held Zeitoun burned all night on power from a locomotive of which rail company?

Amtrak's engine ran around the clock as a generator. Zeitoun's cage stood right beside it for three days, and he said he felt he was going deaf.

With the ground floor of his house underwater, Abdulrahman Zeitoun slept in a tent pitched where?

On the roof he could look out over water that had swallowed half his house. He had hauled what he could save up to the second floor first.

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which Zeitoun won in 2010, grew out of the accords that ended which 1990s war?

Bosnian War peace talks were held in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995. The literary prize followed in 2006, for books that lead readers to understand other peoples and faiths.

Zeitoun won a 2009 book prize in the Current Interest category from which American newspaper?

Los Angeles Times judges gave it their Current Interest prize, and Entertainment Weekly later placed the book on its best-of-the-decade list.

Which later true-story book by the author of Zeitoun follows a Yemeni American from San Francisco trapped in Sana'a?

The Monk of Mokha tells of a young man who set out to revive the ancient art of Yemeni coffee and was caught in the city by civil war.