He was passed out cold on the attic floor, overcome by exhaustion, by the fumes of a nearby leaking gas pipe, by the sense he just wanted a moment's respite from the overwhelming destruction, the bullet-riddled anarchy, the seemingly hopeless consequence that surrounded him on all sides.

By nightfall, if the water lapping at the attic floorboards didn't kill him, the looters already shooting at him likely would.

That was Wesam Abdallah's predicament after the winds of Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, and the floodwaters from the broken levees submerged much of the city.

He was trapped in the attic of the Abdallah family's combination grocery, restaurant, butcher shop, clothing store, video-game room and check-cashing kiosk — the ghetto equivalent of a Wal-Mart, a place local folks called Hulio's — at the corner of LaSalle and Sixth, just across the street from the notorious Magnolia Projects in uptown New Orleans' Third Ward.

"He would have died," Nader Abdallah, Wesam's youngest brother and the Ohio State Buckeyes' 295-pound starting defensive tackle said before practice the other day. "But that's when something unbelievable happened. He'll tell you, it was a miracle."

After some initial hesitation, Wesam — or Sam as he's known to longtime friends — did tell it by phone from Houston, where he now lives: "I haven't told this to anybody but my family and friends. It was really crazy.

"I'd gotten dizzy and passed out. All of a sudden, though, I had a bird flapping its wings in my face. A big hole had been ripped in the roof, and that bird flew in and woke me up. That's when it hit me — I had to get out of there or I'd be dead."

He didn't want the final chapter of the Abdallah family's saga in New Orleans to end with yet another funeral. And so in the darkness of night, the 6-foot-3, 330-pounder slipped into the water and started to swim.

"It was a nightmare for him," said Mazen, now the middle Abdallah brother. "Behind the store is a graveyard, and in New Orleans all the graves are above ground. After the levees broke, the dead bodies all washed out of the cemetery. He said he'll never forget the smell and some of the things he saw."

Sam worked his way out of the Third Ward in search of higher ground and now — nearly 21/2 years later — he and the rest of the Abdallah family find themselves in a lofty situation in the most unlikely of places.

Right back in New Orleans.

On Jan. 7, Nader's Ohio State Buckeyes meet the local-favorite Louisiana State Tigers in the pinnacle of college football, the Bowl Championship Series national title game at the Superdome, which towers just a few minutes away from the now-gutted store that for 25 years stood as the Abdallah family's totem to the American dream.

Nader's father, Younes, and his mother, Izzieh, are flying in from Ramallah, the Palestinian city on the West Bank where they now live. The other Abdallah children — Sam, now a credit restoration specialist; Mazen, a lawyer; and their sister Linda, a private banker — will come from Houston.

Guys from the old neighborhood will be there, too, most notably rapper Juvenile, who'll be on the OSU sideline wearing a No. 93 Buckeyes jersey in honor of Nader.

"I'll be able to walk into the Superdome and know we've finally come full circle," Mazen said. "New Orleans is where the family dream began, where it all was lost and where it's come back again. We can thank Nader for that."

But the Bucks' lineman shook his head against such praise: "When you know all of what we've come through, you know that my story is the small one in our family."

Katrina's wrath

The most telling tale, Nader said, belongs to his dad, who grew up in a refugee camp outside Nablus in the West Bank: "Thirteen people lived in one tent. It was a war-torn area, and they had nothing."

Mazen agreed: "Our father didn't even taste meat until he was teenager." He was working, though, from the time he was 6, Sam said, "selling candy and apples on the street."

Eventually Younes ended up a teacher and basketball coach. He married Izzieh, and they already had three of their six children — Husam, Sam and Shadi — when they came to America in 1980.

Younes tried Chicago, then moved to New Orleans, where he worked in that corner store 13 hours a day and worked another six hours each night as a janitor at a McDonald's restaurant.

Eventually, he bought the store that catered to the some 2,100 people who lived in the Magnolia Projects.

"All of us boys worked there," Nader said. "I started when I was 6 and worked until I was a junior in high school and started football. It was pretty much my whole life. I was the butcher. I cooked (jambalaya, gumbo, red beans and rice, po'boys), worked the cash register, stocked shelves, you name it."

And while the Magnolia Projects neighborhood had one of the highest crime rates in the nation, Nader said his family's business was never robbed in 25 years.

"That's a tribute to our father," Sam said. "He watched all the kids in the area grow up. He donated to community efforts, sponsored barbecues and field trips. We figure he also attended some 30 (young people's) funerals, too. People respected him."

Yet when everyone's lives were torn asunder by Katrina, civility washed away from some folks as well. Sam — who stayed at the store after the rest of his family fled town — knows firsthand.

"When Katrina finally came, it sounded like a freight train going over the building," he said. "The rain went from the ground up. The building shook, and water came in on all sides.

"Two hours after the storm passed, things calmed down a little, and I went outside and saw something I'll never forget. I looked up, and the sky was blowing by at 100 miles an hour. That spooked me out. I saw a lightning bolt knock a large tree down, and over the radio of a cop who's my friend, we heard about this guy the next block over who was decapitated. It was surreal."

Eventually he reopened his store, and soon a crowd of some 3,000 people had lined up to buy any staple they could. What he didn't sell, he gave away, but by late the next morning, everyone suddenly disappeared.

Word came that the levees were breaching, and when Sam awoke a day later, he looked out the attic window and saw "an ocean" all around.

The bottom floor of the store was flooded, and when he managed to swim out and stand on the roof of his truck, a neighborhood thug came up in a canoe, his paddle a broom, and said he wanted inside.

"I told him I had nothing, and besides, everything was under water," Sam said. "He said, 'You got something I want. The banks aren't open today. What you do with all that money?' "

That's when Sam knew there'd be trouble, and soon after a Molotov cocktail bounced off the building. Then gunfire began to pepper the store. He responded with rifle fire, and eventually the assailants disappeared.

Soon after, Sam passed out.

Were it not for the miraculous bird, he may well have been the third Abdallah son to meet a tragic end.

Two and a half months before Katrina — right after the OSU spring game that he attended — Shadi was killed in a crash of the 18-wheeler he drove.

And several years before that, oldest son Husam — just 14 at the time — was accidently shot to death by a friend.

"Everybody loved him, and I thought he was just perfect," Mazen said. "Already he was 6-feet tall, strong, muscular, a good athlete. He ran a (mini) marathon one day, finished third and was supposed to stay at school until Dad picked him up. Instead he went to the house of a friend, who showed him a shotgun that went off and killed him."

After that Younes changed.

"Before that it was anything goes," Sam said. "You could play sports, do things. But when (Husam) died, Dad wanted us to have nothing to do with sports. He's from the old school and he saw sports as part of the reason Husam died. He said football was just a game and life was about learning, working."

A brother's help

As a high school freshman, Mazen tried to play football until the day he showed up at home with his shoulder pads and helmet:

"I laid them on the floor in the den, and my father was livid. He told me to get my head out of the clouds and concentrate on school. He said that's the only way we'd make it in this country."

The football ban held until Nader — showing signs of real athleticism — became a high school junior. That's when Sam and Mazen began petitioning their father to let him use his talents.

Younes relented and, as Mazen put it, "Nader had an incredible year that very first season. Once my father saw his football could pay for college, he was all for it. And that's what happened. The highlight film from that first season got Nader offers from all over."

He chose OSU, and after redshirting the 2004 season, he found himself number two on the depth in spring ball. Then came the traumatic year that left him emotionally drained and physically bloated.

Shadi — with whom Nader was especially close — was killed right after the spring game. Ten weeks later, Katrina laid waste to New Orleans and sent his family fleeing from their home in Metairie.

Some family members — including his mom — came to live with him in Columbus for several months. Soon, Nader was back eating his favorite cooking, especially Mom's makluba, an Arabic dish he said includes "rice, cauliflower, chicken and special flavors."

He ate enough of it that he went from 285 to 335 pounds and found himself waddling into the coaches' doghouse. He played little last season as well and became increasingly unhappy. After the Bucks' embarrassment in last year's BCS title game, Mazen said he knew someone had to step in:

"I said 'screw it' and dropped everything and came to Ohio and lived with him from January to March. We ran together, worked out together, quit eating fried foods together.

"Every day right after that title game, he was the only guy in the Woody Hayes Center working out at 6 a.m. Pretty soon people started noticing, and then his coach (defensive coordinator Jim Heacock) started running with him."

Nader lost the weight, regained his standing on the team and now has started the last seven games at tackle. In the process, his brother said, he's become something of a celebrity with Palestinian people living throughout the United States.

"He's the first Palestinian to play major Division I football," Mazen said. "If he goes to Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, people there all have heard of him. They're proud of him, and so are we. He's accomplished so much. It really is the American Dream."

Nader doesn't quite agree:

"I want to make it an American Dream story, but right now I think it's still in the process. I've got to play my best in the title game. I'm representing Ohio State, Palestine, the city of New Orleans and my family, too. I've still got to show people just what we can do when the stakes are high."

On that count he need not worry.

Like his father, he's been doing that already.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2156

or tarchdeacon@DaytonDailyNews.com.