Zeitoun Response 2 (11/29/11)

"Zeitoun and Nasser bushed whatever dust they could over their hands and arms and neck to cleanse themselves, and they prayed." (Eggers 245)
This line in particular was one that really stood out to me.  It was its own paragraph, and it seems fitting that it was.  Right before this sentence, Zeitoun explains how in times where you have nothing else to cleanse yourself with before you pray, you can use dust as a substitute.  When they were prisoned at Camp Greyhound, this was one thing they were ceratain to have an abundance of.  I chose this sentence to talk about because of the irony of it.  How simple it is, yet how much it says, and how much more it implies.  These two men, doing good deeds for many of the survivors in New Orleans, get captured, punished, and denied most rights to them.  In this time of complete and unavoidable error by the city of New Orleans, these two men were not only trapped in the city, but trapped in a makeshift prison.  They needed to pray.  They needed to be heard, by anybody, anything.  They did what they could to pray, cleansing themselves with the debris from an act of nature, an act of God.  It is not said, but one can make an educated assumption that they were praying for their saftey, even after the storm was over.  To me, the passage does not say much, but at the same time, it tells the complete story.