Zeitoun
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40 free Zeitoun trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Zeitoun is the true story of one family in the days after Hurricane Katrina. Abdulrahman Zeitoun stayed behind in New Orleans when his wife Kathy and their children left, spent the first days of the flood helping stranded neighbors, and was then arrested on his own property and held for weeks without a phone call. The book follows both of them: his ordeal in custody and her search for a husband who had vanished. This quiz covers the story the way readers and classes discuss it. There are questions on the family and their life before the storm, on the rescues, on the arrest and the makeshift jail, on Kathy's weeks of waiting, and on the release and what came after. A further group looks at how the book was researched and published, the prizes it won and the film that was planned. It suits students reading the book for class, book clubs, and anyone who wants to check how much of it has stayed with them. Every answer comes with a short explanation that adds a detail from the record.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01After Katrina flooded New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun rescued neighbors while paddling which secondhand boat?
Canoe
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.
Q 02Soldiers at the makeshift jail holding Abdulrahman Zeitoun said he belonged to the Taliban and which other network?
Al-Qaeda
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.
Q 03The makeshift jail where Abdulrahman Zeitoun was caged stood in the New Orleans station of which bus company?
Greyhound
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.
Q 04Which American writer, known for the memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, wrote the book Zeitoun?
Dave Eggers
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.
Q 05Abdulrahman Zeitoun, the New Orleans businessman at the heart of Zeitoun, grew up in which Middle Eastern country?
Syria
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.
Q 06Besides rescuing neighbors, Abdulrahman Zeitoun crossed flooded New Orleans to feed which abandoned animals?
Dogs
Dogs trapped in flooded houses got food from him on his daily rounds, alongside the water and supplies he carried to stranded people.
Q 07Abdulrahman Zeitoun was held on $75,000 bail for which crime, supposedly committed at a house he owned himself?
Looting
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.
Q 08The surname Zeitoun, which gives the Katrina book its title, comes from the Arabic word for which fruit's tree?
Olive
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.
Q 09Abdulrahman Zeitoun said the wire cages at the New Orleans bus station reminded him of which American-run prison camp?
Guantánamo Bay
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.
Q 10Which director of The Silence of the Lambs announced plans in 2009 to turn the book Zeitoun into a film?
Jonathan Demme
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.
Q 11Abdulrahman Zeitoun held keys to hundreds of New Orleans homes because he and Kathy ran which kind of business?
Painting and contracting
Painting and contracting was the trade, run by the couple as partners. He stayed through the storm partly to watch over his clients' houses.
Q 12Abdulrahman Zeitoun's house flooded only after Katrina had passed, when which defenses around New Orleans gave way?
Levees
Levees gave way and the water kept rising, so he carried what he could upstairs and then took to the streets by boat.
Q 13Zeitoun reads like a novel and has been called one on air, but the book belongs to which category?
Nonfiction
Q 21Which San Francisco publishing house, founded by the book's own author, first brought out Zeitoun in 2009?
McSweeney's
McSweeney's sent the book to press in mid-May and had it on sale about six weeks later; the printer was in Canada.
Q 22Which federal department phoned Kathy Zeitoun to say it had never had any interest in her jailed husband?
Homeland Security
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.
Q 23After three days in the bus-station cages, Abdulrahman Zeitoun was bused to which Louisiana prison in St. Gabriel?
Hunt Correctional Center
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.
Q 14Many ration meals handed to the devout Abdulrahman Zeitoun in the bus-station cages contained which forbidden meat?
Pork
Pork or ham seemed to turn up in nearly every meal, so he and a fellow Muslim prisoner often went without.
Q 15Abdulrahman Zeitoun was arrested by police working alongside armed troops from which part-time American military force?
National Guard
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.
Q 16Before settling in Louisiana, Abdulrahman Zeitoun spent years travelling the world in which line of work?
Merchant sailor
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.
Q 17Kathy Zeitoun learned her husband was alive only when which visitor to his prison broke the rules to phone her?
A missionary
A missionary handing out Bibles took down her number and rang her on 19 September, about two weeks after the arrest.
Q 18Years after Katrina, Kathy Zeitoun was diagnosed with symptoms of which condition, including memory loss and dizziness?
Post-traumatic stress
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.
Q 19As Katrina approached, Kathy Zeitoun first drove the children to stay with relatives in which Louisiana city?
Baton Rouge
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.
Q 20Kathy Zeitoun and her children waited for news of Abdulrahman at a friend's home in which southwestern state?
Arizona
Arizona, in the Phoenix area, is where she filed a missing-person report with the Red Cross once his daily calls stopped.
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.
Q 24Medical staff at the bus-station jail would not stop to treat Abdulrahman Zeitoun's infected cut on which body part?
Foot
Foot pain was only the start: once in prison he felt a sharp ache in his side as well, and still saw no doctor.
Q 25Which legal right with a Latin name was denied to the 1,200 people held in the makeshift jail where Zeitoun was caged?
Habeas corpus
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.
Q 26Before Zeitoun, its author told the life story of Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng in which book?
What Is the What
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.
Q 27The Zeitoun family home stood in which New Orleans neighborhood, a few miles from downtown and the Superdome?
Uptown
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.
Q 28Which New Orleans mayor ordered the city's first mandatory evacuation the day before Katrina made landfall?
Ray Nagin
Ray Nagin signed the order on the Sunday morning. Zeitoun stayed anyway, to watch over his house, his job sites and his rental properties.
Q 29Kathy Zeitoun, who converted to Islam before meeting her husband, was raised in which Christian tradition?
Southern Baptist
Southern Baptist was her upbringing. A childhood friend who had converted first introduced her to Islam after Kathy's first marriage failed.
Q 30In which Mediterranean fishing town, home to a famous Sufi mystic's tomb, did Abdulrahman Zeitoun grow up?
Jableh
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.