Zeitoun: Part 4: Saturday September 17 Summary & Analysis

Zeitoun has trouble sleeping but then spends his days exhausted. He still feels guilty for having remained in the city, and ridiculous for having a sense that God had put him there to do good deeds. As a result he’s put his family in danger. For so long he’s been a model citizen, but he put himself out on a limb with this role.

Zeitoun has always had faith that the machinery of government functioned in the United States, but now every piece of that machinery seems to be devouring anything in its path. It no longer seems like the police and military are acting on behalf of citizens, or are kept in check by regulations, laws, and decency.

Zeitoun thinks of the term “bycatch,” a fishing term for the thousands of creatures that they’d pull in off the coast of Jableh along with the sardines. Sometimes they wouldn’t know until it was too late, and the creatures—one time a dolphin—were dead.

Zeitoun has been confined 23 hours a day to his cell, unable to work, read, build, or do anything else. He realizes that an unconscious part of his motivations had been to live up to his brother Mohammed—but now he thinks he risked too much. He wonders if his imprisonment is God’s way of tempering his pride. Zeitoun prays late at night for his family and for a messenger to tell his wife he’s alive.