Zeitoun (27 page)

Hunt Correctional Center was a complex of one-story red-brick buildings laid out across an immaculate green campus. Everything was arranged in orderly grids. The fences, and the barbed wire atop them, gleamed in the sun. The grass was bright and newly cut. Sprinklers ticked and spun in the distance.

The prisoners were processed one by one, at tables placed outside. Zeitoun’s entrance interview was brief and his hosts were polite. Two women asked him about his health, any medications he was using, his food restrictions. He was struck by how professional and respectful they were. It occurred to him that this level of professionalism might mean that standard procedure—a phone call for the accused—would be observed, and he would be free within a day or two. At the very least, Kathy would know he was alive. That was all that mattered.

They were brought into a changing room and told to strip naked. Zeitoun did so, in the company of a dozen other men, and with such numbers he did not fear strip searches or violence. He removed his shirt, shorts, and underwear, and they were taken away by prison workers.

He and the other prisoners were given orange short-sleeved jumpsuits. They were not given underwear. Zeitoun stepped into the jumpsuit, zipped it up, and put his shoes back on.

*    *    *

They were put back on a bus and driven through the prison complex—an array of geometrically arranged buildings with blue roofs. The bus stopped at what seemed to be the last prison block, in what was evidently the highest-security section of the prison.

Zeitoun and the others on the bus were led into one of the long cellblocks. He was brought down a long concrete hallway and then directed into a cell. It was no more than six feet by eight feet, meant for one prisoner. Nasser was inside already. The door closed. The bars were baby blue.

The cell was constructed entirely from cement. The toilet was molded from cement and placed in the center of the cell. The bed, on the side of the room, was made of cement, with a rubber mattress atop it. On the back wall there was a small window covered in thick Plexiglas. A vague white square was visible, presumably the sky.

Zeitoun and Nasser barely spoke. There was nothing to say. They both knew their predicament had just taken a far more serious turn. The two Syrian Americans had been isolated. When they had been caged with Todd and Ronnie, it seemed possible that the charges against them—whenever they were actually leveled—might be limited to looting. But now the two Syrians had been separated from the Americans, and there was no predicting where this would go.

Zeitoun remained certain that one phone call would free him. He was a successful and well-known man. His name was known all over the city of New Orleans. He only needed to reach Kathy and she would knock down every wall to get to him.

All day Zeitoun made it his business to sit by the bars, waving a napkin, pleading with the guards to grant him a call. The guards seemed to relish concocting variations of their denials.

“Phone’s broken,” they would say.

“Not today.”

“Lines are down.”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“What’ll you do for me?”

“Not my problem. You’re not our prisoner.”

This was the first but not the last time Zeitoun would hear this. He had not been processed in a traditional way, and was not assigned to Hunt for the long term. Therefore he was not technically a Hunt prisoner, and so was not bound by the institution’s standard operating procedure. This was what Zeitoun was told many times by the guards:

“You’re FEMA’s problem.”

FEMA was footing the bill for his incarceration, they said, and that of all the other prisoners from New Orleans. The Elayn Hunt Correctional Center was renting space to warehouse these men, but otherwise made no claims to their welfare or rights.

The night came but was barely distinguishable from the day. The lights were out by ten, but the prison was full of voices. Prisoners talked, laughed, screamed. There were various unidentifiable sounds coming from all corners. Smacking, grunting. The smoke seemed to increase as the night went on. The smells were rancid—cigarettes, marijuana, old food, sweat, decay.

The pain in Zeitoun’s side had gotten worse. It was a throbbing ache, as if his kidney were inflamed. He never overworried about any such
problems, but what if Kathy had been right, that toxins in New Orleans had found their way into his body? Or perhaps it was the pepper spray at Greyhound—he had surely inhaled enough of the gas to cause some internal reaction.

But he dismissed the pain. He could think only of Kathy. It had now been four days since she had heard from him. He could not imagine her suffering. Where would his mind be if she went missing for four days? He hoped she had not told the children. He hoped she had not told anyone. He hoped she had found comfort in God. God had a plan, he was certain.

In the early hours, Zeitoun, weakened by lack of sleep and food and the grim nothingness of his surroundings, recalled the passage of the Qur’an called
al-Takwir
, or “The Darkening”:

Again Zeitoun had not slept. The night before, the fluorescent lights above had been turned off at ten p.m., and had come on at three in the morning. In this prison, three o’clock was considered the beginning of the day.

After he and Nasser prayed, Zeitoun tried to exercise inside the cell. His foot was still raw, but he jogged in place. He did push-ups, jumping jacks. The pain in his side, though, only increased with the activity. He stopped.

Breakfast was sausage, which he could not eat, and scrambled eggs, which were nearly inedible. He took a few bites and drank the juice provided. He and Nasser sat on the bed, side by side, barely talking. The only thing on Zeitoun’s mind was making a phone call. There was nothing else in the world.

He heard the guard coming down the hallway, picking up the
breakfast trays. As soon as the footsteps were close enough, Zeitoun leapt up to the front gate. The guard jumped back a step, startled by Zeitoun’s sudden appearance.

“Please,” he said, “one phone call?”

The guard ignored the question and instead looked around Zeitoun to Nasser, who was still sitting on the bed. The guard gave Zeitoun a quizzical eye and moved on to the next cell.

An hour later, Zeitoun heard the guard’s footsteps again, and again Zeitoun rose up to meet him as he passed the gate. “Please, can I make a call?” he asked. “Just to my wife.”

This time the guard issued a cursory shake of the head before peering around Zeitoun to see Nasser, who again was sitting on the bed. Now the look the guard gave Zeitoun was suggestive, even lewd. He raised his eyebrows and nodded over to Nasser. He was implying that Zeitoun and Nasser were romantically engaged, and that Zeitoun, fearing detection, had leapt from the bed when he heard the guard approaching.

By the time Zeitoun realized what the guard was implying, it was too late to argue. The guard was gone, down the hall. But this implication, that Zeitoun was bisexual, that he would betray his wife, so enraged him that he could barely contain himself.

At midday, Zeitoun was taken out of his cell. He was brought to a small office, where a prison guard stood next to a digital camera. He instructed Zeitoun to sit down on a plastic chair. As Zeitoun waited for the next command, the photographer squinted at him and cocked his head.

“You eyeballing me?” he yelled.

Zeitoun said nothing.

“Why the fuck you eyeballing me?” the photographer yelled.

He went on about how difficult he could make Zeitoun’s stay at Hunt, that a man with an attitude like that would not last long. Zeitoun had no idea what he had done to provoke the man. He was still cursing as Zeitoun was led out of the room and returned to his cell.

In the late afternoon, Zeitoun again heard footsteps coming down the hallway. He went to the front of the cell and there he saw the same guard.

“What are you two doing in there?” the guard asked.

“What are you saying?” Zeitoun hissed. He had never been so angry.

“You can’t do that kind of thing in your cell, buddy,” the guard said. “I thought that was against your religion anyway.”

That was it for Zeitoun. He let loose a barrage of expletives and threats to the guard. He didn’t care what happened.

The guard seemed shocked. “You really talking to me that way? You know what I can do to you?”

Zeitoun was finished. He went to the back of the cell and folded his arms. If he were any closer, he would be too tempted to throw himself against the bars, grabbing for any part of the guard’s flesh.

In the morning the door was opened and four men were added to their cell. All four were African American, between thirty and forty-five. Zeitoun and Nasser nodded to them in greeting, and with a quick choreography about who would sit where, the new residents found places in the tiny cell. Three men sat width-wise on the bed, and three on the floor, against the wall. Cramped and soaked in sweat, they rotated every hour.

*    *    *

Zeitoun no longer harbored any expectations of being granted a phone call from any of the guards he had seen thus far. He pinned his hopes on seeing a new guard, a new employee of the prison, some visitor. He had no idea how the prison worked, how any prison worked. But he had seen movies where lawyers walked the cellblocks, where visitors passed through. He needed to find someone like that. Any one person from the world outside—someone who might grant one small mercy.

The men in the cell told each other how they had ended up at Hunt. All had been picked up in New Orleans after the storm. This entire wing of the prison, they said, held Katrina prisoners. “We’re all FEMA,” one said. Two of the men had been arrested for moving furniture, in situations not unlike Zeitoun’s.

One man said he was a sanitation worker from Houston. His company had been contracted shortly after the storm to come in and begin the cleanup. One morning he was walking from the hotel to his truck when a National Guard truck pulled up. He was arrested on the spot, handcuffed, and brought to Camp Greyhound.

It was his first time behind bars, and of all the prisoners doing “Katrina time,” as they’d termed it, he was the most perplexed by it all. He had, after all, come to New Orleans at the behest of his company. He usually picked up garbage in Houston, but after the hurricane, his supervisor said they had taken a contract in New Orleans. This prisoner, thinking it would be interesting to see what had become of the city and wanting to help in its cleanup, went willingly. He was in uniform, and had identification, the keys to his truck, everything. But nothing
worked. He was charged with looting and put in the cages behind the bus station.

Another of the cellmates said he was a fireman in New Orleans. He stayed after the storm, just as he had been asked to stay. He was in his yard when he was picked up by a passing Humvee. They charged him with looting, loaded him into the back, and brought him to Greyhound.

Zeitoun learned that most of those brought to Camp Greyhound had been arraigned in a more or less standard fashion. Most had been brought inside the bus station the morning after their arrest, and in an upstairs office, a makeshift court had been arranged. There had been a judge, and at least one lawyer. The arrestees were told their charges, and most of them were offered a deal: if they didn’t contest the charges, they would be given a misdemeanor conviction and would be required to perform community-service hours, starting immediately. Some of those who took the bargain—thus accepting the permanent strike on their record—were promptly brought to the police station downtown, where they began repairing and repainting the damaged offices.

The stabbing pain in his side, which Zeitoun had first felt at Greyhound, had now amplified tenfold. It felt like a long screw was being twisted, slowly, into his kidney. It was difficult to sit, to stand, to lay down. Whenever he switched positions, he would find relief for five minutes before the pain returned. He was not one to worry about such things. He had had so many injuries over the years and rarely sought treatment. But this felt different. He thought of infections, the many diseases Kathy had mentioned when trying to get him to leave the city. He needed to find help.

*    *    *

There was a nurse who came through the cellblock once a day, pushing a cart full of medicine, handing pills to the prisoners.

Zeitoun stopped her as she wheeled by. He told her about the pain.

“Do you have a prescription?” she asked.

He told her no, that the pain was new.

“Then you need to see the doctor,” she said.

He asked how he could see the doctor.

She told him to fill out a form describing his pain. The doctor would look at the form and then decide if Zeitoun needed attention. The nurse handed him the form and wheeled her cart down the hall.

Zeitoun filled out the form, and when she came back on her way out, he handed it to her.

After dinner Zeitoun’s cellmates shared the stories they had heard from the other prisoners they’d encountered. The prisoners who had arrived at Hunt during the first days after the storm had lived through conditions beyond comprehension.