Zeitoun (1st chapter)

“Growing up in Syria he had often heard the expression ‘If your hand doesn’t work for it, your heart doesn’t feel sorry for it’” (Eggers 48).

Zeitoun remembers this expression from his childhood after he sees his daughters leaving so much of leftovers from dinner. This quote applies on just about everything. When I was reading this passage, it reminded me the children I babysit. They walk around the house with shoes on right after the cleaners leave the house. If they cleaned the house, they would take their shoes off right at the door. However, this lack of appreciation comes with the package called childhood. We all have been there.

When I learned what books we will be reading in this class, Zeitoun was the one I looked forward to reading the most. What made me interested in this book was the fact that it is based on true story and that this nonfiction is from a contemporary southern US. When I found out what exactly this book is about, I was eager to learn what the people were going through during and after the deadly hurricane Katrina. Even though we do not get hurricanes in my country (Czech Republic), we have had very destructive floods in the area where I used to live, thus I can imagine what the characters of the story might have been going through. I read the first passage with one breath; I could not put the book down. What shocked me the most was that, in today’s Louisiana, people encounter prejudice against race, ethnicity, and religion. I could not believe that a bunch of teenagers would take off a hijab to an adult woman. I could understand they might probably do it to their peers at school, but the disrespect to adults on the street was very shocking to me. This lack of knowledge about diverse ethnicities and religions shows that we all have still so much to learn about respect and consideration of others.