Zeitoun: Part I

by Dave Eggers
When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the Zeitoun family faced not only the aftermath of the storm, but also the sudden and inexplicable arrest of Adbulrahman Zeitoun, a small business owner and father of four. Learn these words from their story, as reported by acclaimed writer Dave Eggers.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. undulate
    move in a wavy pattern or with a rising and falling motion
    And when Abdulrahman first witnessed the sardines circling in the black he could not believe the sight, the beauty of the undulating silver orb below the white and gold lantern light.
  2. litany
    a prayer consisting of a series of invocations by the priest with responses from the congregation
    Kathy had grown up in Baton Rouge and was used to the hurricane routine: the litany of preparations, the waiting and watching, the power outages, the candles and flashlights and buckets catching rain.
  3. swoon
    pass out from weakness or physical or emotional distress
    They knew every character and every line and had learned how to swoon like aristocratic maidens.
  4. wistful
    showing pensive sadness
    His girls were playful, wistful, always dancing across the house, jumping from bed to bed, singing with feigned vibrato, swooning.
  5. blithe
    carefree and happy and lighthearted
    She was one of them, really, blithe and girlish in her manner and her tastes—video games, Harry Potter, the baffling pop music they listened to.
  6. impervious
    not admitting of passage or capable of being affected
    Kathy had known for a decade that her husband was one of those inexplicably solid, self-sufficient, and never-needy men who got by on air and water, impervious to injury or disease—but still she wondered how he sustained himself.
  7. ethereal
    characterized by unusual lightness and delicacy
    Zeitoun looked down to his wife, astonished at how ethereally beautiful she looked, her skin radiant, her eyes so tired.
  8. discerning
    having or revealing keen insight and good judgment
    They were dream-filled, but discerning, too, assessing—the eyes of an entrepreneur.
  9. hijab
    a headscarf worn by Muslim women
    Kathy adjusted her hijab in the front window, tucking in stray hairs—it was a nervous habit—while watching Zeitoun leave the driveway in a swirling grey cloud.
  10. ubiquitous
    being present everywhere at once
    On the side was their ubiquitous logo, the words ZEITOUN A. PAINTING CONTRACTOR next to a paint roller resting at the end of a rainbow.
  11. respite
    a pause for relaxation
    Nights, weekends, holidays—respite never came.
  12. precocious
    characterized by exceptionally early development
    How had they produced such a child—so smart and self-possessed, so dutiful, helpful, and precocious?
  13. circumspect
    careful to consider potential consequences and avoid risk
    She was practically an adult now, it seemed—she certainly spoke like one, often more measured and circumspect than her parents.
  14. decadent
    relating to indulgence in something pleasurable
    Just to have that thirty minutes of solitude during the drive—it was decadent but essential.
  15. magisterial
    befitting an eminent person
    He loved this place, a magisterial old house in the Garden District.
  16. attrition
    a wearing down to weaken or destroy
    He’d had good experiences with almost all of them, though in his business there was an above-average rate of attrition and turnover.
  17. transient
    lasting a very short time
    Many workers were transient, intending only to spend a few months in the country before returning to their families.
  18. wanderlust
    very strong or irresistible impulse to travel
    Zeitoun had gone on to work on ships without Ahmad, too, seeing most of the world in a ten-year period of wanderlust that eventually brought him to New Orleans and to his life with Kathy.
  19. willful
    done by design
    It was this kind of willful, wildly romantic attention to beauty—crumbling and fading beauty needing constant attention—that made this city so unlike any other and such an unparalleled sort of environment for a builder.
  20. discourse
    an extended communication dealing with some particular topic
    Once Georgi started you were in for a twenty-minute discourse on the former Soviet Union, waterfront property in Bulgaria, and his various cross-country motorhome trips with his wife Albena, who had passed away years ago and was greatly missed.
  21. tortuous
    highly complex or intricate and occasionally devious
    But the story Mahmoud told most often when Zeitoun was growing up, the story he told when forbidding his children to live on the sea, was this one:
    Mahmoud was returning from Greece on a thirty-six-foot schooner when they ran into a black and tortuous storm.
  22. bemused
    perplexed by many conflicting situations or statements
    Zeitoun’s father would likely be both proud and bemused by the trajectory of his son’s life.
  23. panhandle
    a narrow strip of land projecting from a larger area
    They had shifted the possible track of the storm from the Florida panhandle to the Mississippi—Louisiana coast.
  24. deference
    courteous regard for people's feelings
    He would be at a barbecue at Ahmaad and Yuko’s, but out of deference to her—he didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable—when Kathy arrived, he would leave.
  25. swarthy
    naturally having skin of a dark color
    “They’re swarthy,” she said. “I only want white people working on my house.” She said it like she was choosing a kind of dressing for her salad.
  26. assent
    agree or express agreement
    The woman assented, but continued to call.
  27. staunch
    firm and dependable especially in loyalty
    Be one who is staunch in equity,
    witnesses for God
    even against yourselves
    or ones who are your parents or nearest of kin;
    whether rich or poor,
    for God is closer to both than you are
  28. myriad
    a large indefinite number
    She wanted everything—all seven rooms and their myriad tasks—done in five days.
  29. gambit
    a strategic maneuver
    Every time she thought back on the gambit, and how well it had worked, Kathy smiled to herself.
  30. fusillade
    rapid simultaneous discharge of firearms
    But Kathy let loose a fusillade of pungent suggestions, leaving them dumbfounded and momentarily speechless.
  31. swath
    a path or strip (also figurative)
    “Finish, finish,” he said to his daughters, who were picking at their food, leaving huge swaths of it uneaten.
  32. levee
    an embankment built to prevent a river from overflowing
    And they lived nowhere near any levees, so they wouldn’t get any of the flash flooding that might hit some of the other neighborhoods.
  33. careen
    move at high speed and in an uncontrolled way
    He had seen what happened when a contractor failed to do this: ladders careening through windows and walls, tools damaging furniture, paint all over the lawn and driveway.
  34. duress
    compulsory force or threat
    “Now you can take that thing off.” She’d been a Muslim for fifteen years and they still said this to her. As if the scarf was something worn under duress, only in the company of Zeitoun, a disguise she could shed when he was not around.
  35. proselytize
    convert or try to convert someone to another religion
    The sisters were open, low-key, never proselytizing.
  36. ebullient
    joyously unrestrained
    One day the manager of Webster Clothes, a menswear store across the road, had come into the drugstore and, admiring Kathy’s ebullient personality, asked her if she’d be willing to quit K&B or, if not, take a second job at Webster.
  37. revelatory
    serving to make something apparent or clearly visible
    The fact that Islam acknowledged these books was revelatory for her.
  38. monolithic
    characterized by rigidity and total uniformity
    She’d assumed that Muslims were a monolithic group, and that all Muslims were made of the same devout and unbending stock.
  39. intrinsic
    belonging to a thing by its very nature
    It was all very familiar, intrinsic to any faith.
  40. evangelical
    of a Christian church believing in personal conversion
    At the time, Kathy was attending a large evangelical church not far from her jobs.
  41. miserly
    characterized by or indicative of lack of generosity
    He went on and on, shaming the congregants for their miserly ways.
  42. derisive
    expressing contempt or ridicule
    And with that, he made a snorting, derisive sound, the sort of sound an eight-year-old boy would make on a playground.
  43. imam
    the person who leads prayers in a mosque
    The Christian preachers she’d heard had spent a good amount of time talking about who would and wouldn’t go to hell, how hot it burned and for how long, but the imams she began to meet made no such pronouncements.
  44. berth
    a place where a sailing vessel can be secured
    There were always a half-dozen ships, tankers, and freighters waiting for a berth at the busy port, and often they would anchor close enough to cast a shadow over the tiny island.
  45. dissonance
    disagreeable sounds
    The dissonance woke him.
Created on Tue Apr 10 16:09:24 EDT 2018 (updated Wed Apr 11 11:48:13 EDT 2018)

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