Zeitoun

"I think Dave’s book is quite remarkable. Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a real-life hero – a local businessman who in the aftermath of Katrina paddled from house to house in a canoe, offering help to his neighbours. For his trouble, he was arrested as a suspected terrorist. It is an extraordinary, Kafkaesque tale of how a man, because of his ethnic background, can get caught up in a hellish scenario in which he is held prisoner and nobody knows where he is. His wife didn’t even know what had happened to him. It is a bitter American tale of mistaken identity in the largest sense, and a pretty sobering commentary on the ways in which we can put masks on people who may look unfamiliar in some way. It is a chilling tale to read; the book speaks to the chaos that followed the breakdown of the levees and the breakdown of the order in New Orleans, but it also speaks to larger issues of mistaken identity. The city always will force you to live with opposite scenarios of great optimism and joy and great pessimism and depression. That is New Orleans. There is something about New Orleans which is recognised around the world as an emblem of spiritual renewal. The essence of our cultural expression is grace and wit in the face of encroaching entropy, and there is a great joy in it. But it is not the joy of mindless revelry that some mistake it for. It is the joy of the assertion of being alive in spite of the full realisation of the finiteness of life. There is a profundity in the expression of joy in New Orleans exactly because we know that it only lasts a little while. There is a song they often play at New Orleans funerals called ‘Didn’t He Ramble’. The refrain is: ‘He rambled all around/ in and out of the town/ didn’t he ramble? He rambled/ He rambled till the butcher cut him down.’ Everybody in New Orleans knows that the butcher is waiting. It could be natural causes, or a shooting, or the breaking of a levee – it could be anything, anytime – so while you are here you need to address the fact of your own mortality with defiant grace and beauty. That is why it is so potent. As far as the BP disaster is concerned… of course people in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are more immediately aware and affected by what is going on than people elsewhere. But I think people need to realise that this is a national disaster, and not just a local one. It is, in fact, a national tragedy. In the last five years we have seen three cataclysmic disasters – the failure of the levees, the national economic meltdown, and now this. Somehow we keep refusing to get the message that government agencies and large corporations cannot be expected to police themselves. It just doesn’t work that way. The fact there is so little will to address this is a tragedy for democracy. I get calls and emails from people elsewhere, saying, in effect, ‘Poor New Orleans – first Katrina and now this.’ And what I say is: ‘This is happening to you, too, whether you realise it or not.’ These disasters implicate everyone, and if we can’t find a coherent way of anticipating and responding to crises, then we are doomed morally and spiritually, not just ecologically and financially."