GUSTAV GOSSIP, Phase 2

“The morning was gray, but I had the motivation; I drifted away and ran into more; Heavy weather off shore.” —Billy Joel, from the song “Storm Front”

Phase 2: August 30-31, 2008

“This is the mother of all storms,” Mayor Ray Nagin warned New Orleanians during his Saturday night press conference.

Worse than Katrina.

Staying behind would be the worst decision of our lives.

Those that stay will have to ax their way out of their attic.

Those found wandering the streets would be sent straight to Angola Prison.

“Get your butts out of New Orleans,” Nagin said with his signature irreverent swagger.

So the message was clear— clearly exaggerated, though it still made me cry uncontrollably.

I always knew that an evacuation during hurricane season was possible— it's a reality New Orleanians live with every year, from June 1st through November 1st. But I never thought a storm comparable to Katrina would come our way.

Haz started to seriously worry for the first time a few minutes later, as Police commissioner Warren Riley gave his speech.

Riley told us he was telling most of his squad to evacuate due to the severity of the storm. Only a “skeleton crew” would be policing the streets.

I looked at my watch. Saturday: 10pm. The mandatory evacuation was starting at noon Sunday. Time to move.

No tears fell as I finishing packing and preparing.

I suddenly felt focused, calm.

I made 6 sandwiches for us to eat in the car (conscious of the notion that no restaurant would be open), washed our remaining dishes, and unearthed more photos to take with us. Haz and I dragged anything that could become a flying projectile in high wind—porch plants, porch furniture, and bicycles— inside.

Outside, our neighbors’ porches were bare like ours. On a night like this on Labor Day weekend, the porches should’ve been packed with conversation.

We unplugged everything, except our fridge. If this storm was going to rival Katrina, we could come back to a rotting, moldy mess. But there was always that chance that they could be wrong. Maybe we would get lucky.

I moved some books, clothes, and shoes to higher shelves. Our house, which is elevated 4 feet, took about 2 feet of water in Katrina. Anything left on the floor, or near the floor, could be lost, though a tornado or fire would destroy it all. This is how we were thinking now. I told Mom that I was prepared for nothing and everything to happen.

In other words, this storm could totally change our lives or be nothing but a forcible adventure.

Haz and I drank some tea before going to sleep at midnight. The alarm was set to wake us up 2 hours later: at 2 am. We figured we wouldn’t hit too much traffic if we got on the road 2 hours before the contra-flow, the evacuation strategy where both sides of the road become one massive one-way out.

We woke up promptly at 2am and started packing the car. Our cats Diamond and Moo jumped around and ran through the house. Our anxious shuffling and moving put them on edge. They knew something strange was going on.

In the car, we managed to fit two cat carriers, a litter box, cat food, human food, a cooler, two suitcases, one boxed wedding dress, two boxes of photos, a Playstation 3, Haz’s camera and tripod, four laptops, pillows, and blankets.

The cats were coerced into their carriers with relative ease. We placed them side-by-side on the backseat, with the litter box, food, and water within their reach.

We climbed into our Saturn Vue and quickly looked around before driving off. Our neighborhood was empty. Even the police officer who lives across the street boarded up his windows and left town.

As we pulled away in the thick, dark morning humidity, I looked back at our shotgun apartment and blew it a kiss. We might never live here again—

or we could be back here, laughing and shrugging, in a few days.

This is the uncertainty— the permanent impermanence that New Orleanians live with, pack, and take with them everywhere. Uncertainty is what makes New Orleans a party town. Live today, because you, your loved ones or your possessions could be gone tomorrow.

Uncertainty is also what keeps New Orleanians so humble, and yet so full of pride. Where else in America do citizens forcibly pack up their lives and leave, hurricane after hurricane, year after year? It’s a situation that makes so many Americans ask: so why do we live here?

I questioned this all week, and I still couldn’t find a good answer as we turned down Canal Boulevard in the first few minutes of our first evacuation together. We had just left behind nearly everything we had acquired together in dozens of countries over five years. As we drove towards the Interstate, I thought about everything we loved but couldn’t take— clothing from Japan and Vietnam; rugs and blankets from Jordan and Thailand; a doll from my childhood; framed artwork, signed books, and CDs. It was all just stuff. Later I would silently curse myself for not putting it all in the attic. It just wasn’t part of the “get out” equation.

We turned onto the Interstate and found it stuffed full of cars. So much for beating the evacuation rush: we were now in it.

The cats meowed and panted as we crawled towards New Orleans East on I-610, heading towards I-10 East. We had decided to head towards a hotel in Tallahassee, safely out of the track of the storm. Haz’s brother Hassan and other family members were headed there. A car ride there would normally take six hours, which was much closer than Dallas, where we both had family.

The cats calmed down a little as we edged closer to Lake Pontchartrain. We listened to our favorite local news, WDSU, on the radio. The voices of familiar reporters suddenly told us I-10 east was closed due to a severe traffic jam in Biloxi and Mobile. We weren’t counting on this. We had no Plan B.

“Let’s go to Dallas,” I sighed, ready to get some sleep.

Haz looked pensive as he turned onto a dark, empty road. He remembered that Highway 90 could also take us across the Lake— and into Mississippi and Alabama along the Gulf.

But Highway 90 was even more congested than I-610. The drivers of cars filled with dogs, cats, TVs, furniture, boxes, blankets, coolers, wheelchairs and bicycles stared straight ahead with flat expressions. No one was honking, screeching their tires, or yelling. Everyone was just trying to keep sane. Our cats remained calm and napped on and off.

I also took a nap and woke up two hours later. We weren’t even across the lake yet. Normally it takes us only 45 minutes to cross Pontchartrain. So far this was 3 hours and counting.

Traffic came to a complete stop shortly after we crossed a narrow sliver of Pontchartrain next to Lake Borgne. Passengers piled out of their cars and stretched. Drivers stepped out and left their car doors open. Our cats woke up, confused. The cause of the halt was unknown. News on the radio told us nothing.

Haz and a few other drivers crossed into the wrong side of traffic to take a quick detour back to I-610, where we started. In Slidell, drivers pulled off as soon as a McDonald's and gas station came into view. Police blocked off the gas station. McDonald's was closed.

So there would be no bathrooms, food, or gas on this trip. We were suffering the same fate as our cats: boxed up inside a cage against our will.

I took over driving as I-10 north became I-59. We couldn’t go east the way we planned, so we would first have to go north to Picayune and take route 43 to I-10 east. As the contra-flow started and all northbound traffic was routed to the “wrong” side of the road, we yelled in tired disbelief when we found that the Picayune exit was closed.

So we crawled our way to Poplarville, where the radio told us we could catch route 26 to Mobile. But that too was closed.

Was this a conspiracy or just the twilight zone? Somebody didn’t want us to leave Mississippi.

So we crawled all the way on I-59 to Laurel, MS, some 30 miles north of Hattiesburg. Our top speed of 50 mph happened only twice, for no more than 2 minutes. Our average speed fluctuated between 10 and 20 miles per hour. Sometimes it was no more than a single digit.

Some passengers adjusted very well to the situation. An old old man shuffled with his cane in the middle of traffic, puffing away at his inhaler, pausing to pet a dog in a stranger’s car. Another man raced alongside a car for fun. Yet another started walking to see if he could go further faster. He did.

We opened the cat carriers and encouraged Diamond and Moo to explore the car. Moo happily crunched on her dry food while Diamond explored every corner and crevice. She finally landed on my lap, where she would spend most of the ride, purring and shedding too much fur from stress. Her presence put me at ease.

We clapped when Senator Barack Obama called our local news station to express his concern.

“My heart goes out to those whose lives have been interrupted,” he remarked.

Lives, interrupted, stuck on a highway in Mississippi. Obama’s voice was oddly comforting. Our own President still hadn’t commented on the situation. I paused to consider how simple everything had become: everything we needed was in our car. We used a highway map to navigate the state with the slogan “Like Coming Home.” We listened to AM radio for storm and traffic information. We ate bagels out of our cooler and, one of us was even forced to use a plastic bottle to urinate. Was it desperation or making the best of a bad situation? I was pretty sure it was the latter. As I looked at other Louisianans crawling by in cars, no one looked even remotely irate. Many smiled. Everyone was doing the same thing: listening to the news on the radio, moving their right foot from gas to brake, looking straight ahead.

And we all desperately needed the bathroom. Many couldn’t wait. In fact, we passed several urine-filled plastic bottles before we reached Laurel, which happens to be my middle name.

In Laurel we finally found a bathroom and gas station and a ton of New Orleanians lining up for both. I chatted with a girl from Metairie who had also been in the car for 9 hours. We had been in the car for 8. On a normal day, Laurel would’ve taken us no more than two.

The town of Laurel connected us with highway 84, a windy and beautifully empty road. 84 took us straight across the southern width of Alabama. Gustav’s preemptive strikes brought us pockets of wind and rain; we even saw the makings of a tornado, spinning dangerously close to land in the distance. Diamond burrowed her head in my arms and Moo willingly hid in her cage as rain pounded our roof.

We were mostly the only vehicle on the road. No more evacuees, no more gas stations or bathrooms— our landscape now consisted of rolling hills, trees, cow pastures and billboards advertising God.

When we finally exited route 84 and the deceptively wide state of Alabama, it was after 10 p.m. 18 hours on the road. Moo continued to hunker down in her cage as I fed her cat treats. Diamond hid in a tiny space wedged between the Playstation 3 and a suitcase as Highway 231 took us down into Florida.

30 miles outside of Tallahassee, a car accident caused traffic to backup in a freakishly familiar way. We followed a detour that took us down narrow one-way hills. A rabbit narrowly escaped our wheels. Moo started meowing uncontrollably as she jumped around the backseat, nervous and stir crazy from the long ride and the winding roads. What could happen next?

Luckily “next” finally happened to be our hotel. We pulled up to the reception hall at 12:30 a.m. Haz and I congratulated the cats, whose patience and remarkable adaptability had well surpassed ours. They were officially New Orleans cats, pet evacuees. We knew they could endure this again, if they had to. But could we?

Haz told the guy at reception that we had been in the car for exactly 19 point 5 hours.

“Well, you’ve been through enough,” he said as he passed Haz the room key.

And we still had no idea what was in store for us, or our city.

But at least we knew our cats would weather the storm.


TO BE CONTINUED …..