My Name is Rachel Corrie

by Rachel Corrie

  You gave me a potential.

  I love you but I'm growing out of what you gave me. I'm saving it inside me and growing outwards. Let me fight my monsters. You made me. You made me.

  Packing photograph of Cindy.

  Mom, why doesn't Dad ever write to me? Has he gotten himself addicted to cocaine while he's away and forgotten about his family? He never wrote back to me and gave me fatherly advice about how to get a job . . . or told me how he almost got swept into the ocean looking for whelks. If this continues I'm going to have to start dating 40-year-old men to make up for my underdeveloped animus.

  Actually, Dad, that was just a little joke, but I think it is important that I fill you in on some sketchy things that have been going on up here. Don't tell Mom who tipped you off, but the mailman's been coming by a lot more than usual, and staying for a real long time, and wearing really racy high-cut mailman shorts. And Mom's been dressing real trampy. I just thought you should know.

  RACHEL as Craig, her father.

  ‘You're just like your mother. Making fun of people with disabilities. You criticize me for not writing when I can hardly see the computer, let alone the type on its screen. Now that I have reading glasses, my wife says they make my eyes look too big. Yet I understand your criticism. I should have written you, sighted or not, it's no excuse. Never mind that all I get is the hand-me-downs. The cast-off e-mails written to your mother that she may choose to share with her husband. Or not. But I don't complain. It's a father's life: work all day so that others may enjoy. I give it freely. Never a word from me!’

  RACHEL to Craig.

  You never get your own personal e-mails because if I so much as give you a ‘heads up’ in one of my e-mails to Mom, I have to prepare myself for the mockery and neo-liberal jabs at my progressive education that are always the thanks I get. Down, oppressor man!

  To the audience.

  Incidentally, at this point, the neo-liberal jabs are pretty close to the mark. At one lecture, our guest speaker was, I think, a physicist. But his side occupation is dream-work. ‘Hi, my name is Dr Jenson, I'm a Harvard grad with a PhD in Political Economy, but on the side I analyze the paintings of my pet donkey, Aphrodite.’

  I like my class. The reading is very interesting. The schedule is completely indecipherable. And the teachers wrap themselves in paper, sing in German, and yell insults at us to help us get a grasp on Dadaism.

  To Craig.

  It's a good thing that you, Chris and Sarah all appear to have stable salaries, because I am steadfastly pursuing a track that guarantees I'll never get paid more than three Triscuits and some spinach.

  RACHEL packs Craig's photograph.

  Packing away bed, books, etc.

  What I have –

  a house cat.

  small hands, crooked toes, knees, elbows

  thighs, a throat and a belly.

  dirt under my nails.

  six lost journals underneath seats

  in trains across the country

  a Buick. questionable.

  eight black ballpoint pens

  sharp teeth

  beady eyes

  and hope.

  What I want –

  a garden with pumpkins

  and bare earth to turn over and

  turn over

  hardwood floors for sock ballets

  air and raspberries

  sometimes in the morning

  danger and stolen kisses

  from a sneaky mystery lover man.

  Picking up a photograph of Colin.

  I have exactly as much of Colin's memory as I need. The sun was shining, Colin read political economy in the green chair. I danced around to Magnetic Fields and mowed the lawn.

  We walked to school together in the morning, and finally it rained. Colin wanted me to walk faster. Colin always wanted to walk faster, and I wanted to trudge and identify ferns.

  I woke up early one day with errands to run and decided I would bump into Colin and his new hoochie-ass girlfriend. I shaved my armpits. I danced around in front of the mirror in the tight shirt I got in the little boy's section of the Salvation Army. I smeared on ChapStick.

  ‘Fun life,’ I say, ‘Fun life.’ I imagine I live in a Mountain Dew commercial. I am always on the beach with a bevy of sinewed friends and we're always dancing.

  I meander through downtown. They are here somewhere, most likely in a shadow, ensnared together. They'll drop the spoons in their strawberry milkshake when I slide past. Free as a bird. Fun life. Toucan Sam.

  They are not at the coffee shop. They are not in the grocery store, on the bridge, at the magazine stand. I drive to the school, embarrassed at myself. Of course he emerges from the library. Minus hoochie-ass girlfriend. I shove my hips out in the sun and make six-guns. He makes six-guns back at me. This town ain't big enough for the two of us.

  ‘Hey-hey.’

  ‘Hey-hey.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Reading up on some young anarchists.’

  He pronounces his words like rubber bands stretched and snapping. I perform a dance beneath the conversation, like I have to pee.

  Fun life. Fun life. Fun life.

  ‘How are you?’

  He's uncomfortable. I grin, sunshine on the apples of my cheeks.

  ‘Well. I'm well. Meeting some people.’

  I'm always on the beach with a bevy of sinewed friends.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good. Gotta job scrubbing toilets.’

  ‘Nice!’

  ‘My friend from North Carolina went home.’

  ‘You had a friend here from North Carolina?’

  ‘You know – Leslie.’

  Sunshine on the apples of my cheeks, sticky in my eyelashes and I'm on the beach and I'm always dancing.

  ‘Shit, Colin! What happened? But things were going so well!’

  He shook his head. Laughed at me.

  It is easy to make the journey. You will know when the time comes. You will fall in love with someone who is perpetually leaving you. Someone who beats you at Scrabble and talks with big words and tells all stories as if they are blues songs. You will memorize the features of someone whose eyes are perpetually bored and whose lips are perpetually amused.

  Eventually, I convinced Colin to quit drowning out my life. The topography of his life consisted of emergency adrenaline shots, jail, sometimes near-death experiences. The topography of my life consisted of making up names for the neighborhood cats, on some days a small new poem, the gossip among my friends. His life was skyscrapers. My life took place on a much smaller scale. That is done now. We are proportionate.

  Putting on her shoes and socks.

  On Wednesday I walked into the forest. Down the path to the little wooden bridge over the creek. And I stood on the bridge and looked at a log that lay across the little stream. Someone had taken rocks from the stream and lined them up like little multicolored frogs across the log.

  I took off my boots and my socks and set them down on the edge of the bridge. Then I jumped onto the bank and climbed onto that log and walked across it, barefoot, nimbly, so that only one of the rocks fell into the water. I squatted in the pebbles and fished interesting rocks out of the stream for myself. I cleaned them and held them and put them in my pocket. Then I stood like Huck Finn with my jeans rolled up, with my back to the bridge and my two empty little brown boots. I sang to the forest. I hummed. I made up waltzes. I belted out Russian drinking songs. Opened my mouth wide and sang.

  She sings.

  Leaving Olympia.

  We are all born and someday we'll all die. Most likely to some degree alone.

  What if our aloneness isn't a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure – to experience the world as a dynamic presence – as a changeable, interactive thing?

  If I lived in Bosnia or Rwanda or who knows where else, needless death wouldn't be
a distant symbol to me, it wouldn't be a metaphor, it would be a reality.

  And I have no right to this metaphor. But I use it to console myself. To give a fraction of meaning to something enormous and needless.

  This realization. This realization that I will live my life in this world where I have privileges.

  I can't cool boiling waters in Russia. I can't be Picasso. I can't be Jesus. I can't save the planet single-handedly.

  I can wash dishes.

  Arriving in Jerusalem.

  January 25th, 2003.

  Very little problem at the airport. My tight jeans and cropped bunny-hair sweater seem to have made all the difference – and of course the use of my Israeli friend's address. The only question was, ‘Where did you meet her?’ The woman behind the glass appeared not to notice my shaking hands. I took a shared taxi into Jerusalem and noticed that the Holy Land is full of rocks and it seems like driving, you could fall off these hills. Just before we leave the airport I read, in the Let's Go Israel book, that more Israelis have been killed in car accidents than in all of Israel's wars combined. I'm still trying to decide what to make of this tidbit of information a day later.

  Writing in notebook.

  Things to do:

  Buy phone card

  Buy phone

  E-mail Michael

  Call Joe & Gili

  Change money

  Call Mom with cell number.

  My introduction to curfew was gentle: a rush outside in the midst of our training to buy lunch before the shops closed in Beit Sahour. There was music – singing in Arabic – pouring into the street from somewhere. By the time the whole group of us had shawarma and falafel, the noise had become the bleat of military jeep horns, the squeal of a car and a voice shouting through a bullhorn – border police or IDF, I don't remember which. As the training went on, there was noise and flashing lights outside – but it wasn't real for me somehow because I was inside this building with these people. Everyone extending theories into the air.

  The scariest thing for non-Jewish Americans in talking about Palestinian self-determination is the fear of being or sounding anti-Semitic. The people of Israel are suffering and Jewish people have a long history of oppression. We still have some responsibility for that, but I think it's important to draw a firm distinction between the policies of Israel as a state, and Jewish people. That's kind of a no-brainer, but there is very strong pressure to conflate the two. I try to ask myself, whose interest does it serve to identify Israeli policy with all Jewish people?

  Anyway, this kind of stuff I just think about all the time and my ideas evolve. I'm really new to talking about Israel-Palestine, so I don't always know the political implications of my words.

  Reading from her notebook.

  Notes from Training:

  When Talking – no hearsay. Call hospitals and official sources. Use quotes. Don't appear to judge rightness or wrongness. Non-Violence – Don't touch those we're confronting. Don't run. Carry nothing that could be used as a weapon. No self-initiating actions.

  January 26th.

  Travel from Beit Sahour to Jerusalem.

  January 27th.

  An attack in Gaza the night before last killed fourteen and injured around thirty.

  The West Bank and Gaza are under extremely strict curfew until after the election tomorrow. You are not allowed to leave your house at all. Not for food. Nothing. I am still in Jerusalem aiming to get to Rafah to join the other internationals trying to prevent the demolition of civilian homes.

  I am relatively sheltered here. Walking around with Palestinians I wait while they are stopped to show ID. Blue stars of David are spray-painted on doors in the Arab section of the old city. I have never seen that symbol used in quite that way. I am used to seeing the cross used in a colonialist way. I know this is something I can't really understand, right now. The reality of curfew, of the checkpoints. I'm sort of embarrassed about how long it takes me to realize in my gut that people live like this . . .

  Reading from her notebook.

  At 10pm, I travel to Rafah. Jehan met the cab. Soldiers at bus stations. Bombed market in Gaza City. Children grab my ass, throw garbage at my head, scream, ‘What's your name?’

  Writing in her notebook.

  Sleep in tent. Gunshot through tent. Start smoking.

  January 31st.

  Today I decided to follow Joe's lead and write in every spare crack of time in every day. I always regret the blank space in my journal from Russia. Here it is different. I am older and the world does not revolve around me. We are in Jehan's brother's apartment in Khan Younis.

  The neighborhoods that have asked us for some form of presence are Yibna, Tel El Sultan, Hi Salam, Brazil, Block J, Zorob, and Block O.

  There is some visible class difference between this building in Khan Younis and, say, Brazil or Block J. There are toys for the children. A table. But this apartment – with blank walls and birds weaving in and out of the windows – would be symptomatic of nearly crushing poverty in the United States.

  There is greenery here. Some trees and grassy places – maybe it is shielded a little by Rafah which is razed and bullet-riddled and bare. Jehan's uncle came to sit with us. He told us that there was a peaceful time in the late ’70s and early ’80s. ‘We build their buildings. We work in the factory.’ He says it is the leaders that make war.

  Writing in her journal.

  Today. Visits to –

  Gaza, re: Nursing

  UN

  Children's Parliament

  Women's group.

  We need to make:

  One beautiful banner in Arabic and English.

  February 1st.

  After we'd helped the water people do more repairs we had gone to look for banner fabric. Jehan found Will and me waiting to pay the man for 30 meters of white cotton. She told us someone had been killed at the Rafah/Egypt border. We met up at the apartment and rode in a strangely Californian SUV past the cemetery to the Palestinian side of the border. A swarm of people waited there. We were given a stretcher and ushered into an office. People talked for a while and then we went out – each of us with a handle.

  We started into the field: five internationals plus Jehan. Jenny spoke over the bullhorn saying, ‘Do not shoot. We are unarmed civilians,’ naming the countries we came from and letting the IDF know our intention to retrieve this man's body.

  The first response from the IDF was shouting, ‘Go back.’ Then they shot about 20 meters in front of us.

  As we continued to walk in the direction of the body – the shots shifted – hitting the ground two to four meters in front of us. We also heard two high-pitched, whistling shots above our heads. We stopped and Jenny requested to talk to the commanding officer.

  A white truck with a blue light rolled up and the person in the truck spoke over the loudspeaker. Told us to leave. Stated, ‘You'll get the body later.’

  The white truck cruised away.

  Then a tank and a bulldozer emerged from the IDF side of the checkpoint and proceeded toward the olive grove. They began moving dirt between us and the olive grove. Smoke blew.

  They created a mound of dirt and shot repeatedly into it.

  This is my very poor drawing of the dead body we just carried. He had a big white hand poised in the air off the stretcher as if doing the crawl or throwing a baseball.

  Had a dream about falling, falling to my death off of something dusty and smooth and crumbling like the cliffs in Utah, but I kept holding on, and when each new foothold or handle of rock broke, I reached out as I fell and grabbed a new one. I didn't have time to think about anything – just react as if I was playing an adrenaline-filled video game. And I heard, ‘I can't die, I can't die,’ again and again in my head. Seems somehow positive compared to the dreams I used to have of tumbling, thinking, ‘This is it, I'm going to die.’

  Reading from her notebook.

  February 4th.

  In Dr Samir's garden.

  Fig tree with
small buds. Dill, lettuce, garlic.

  White plastic chairs, deflated soccer ball, blanket drying on a line.

  Patchy lawn, long shadows.

  Two bulldozers, tanks.

  I went to the kitchen and stayed two hours. The tank stayed too, so no work, no school.

  A soldier came with a sledgehammer.

  The tank started firing – the family were watching Tom & Jerry in the kitchen.

  I played with the children to distract them.

  Dr Samir says, ‘Before intifada – no tanks, no bulldozers, no gunshots, no noise.

  After intifada, daily. Gunshots daily.

  I have no gun in my house, nothing.

  30 years collecting money for house.

  We also afraid no other place to go, three hours they can destroy house.

  I look at my garden. I ask myself, “This year will you eat from these trees like other years?” – I trust in my god – so no problem.’

  February 6th.

  I rode on the bulldozer as it repaired the road throughout the day. Jenny and Will held a banner and spoke through the megaphone for us. A tank stayed present throughout the action. And at some point a jeep arrived. This frightened me because I know at least one person was shot by soldiers in a green jeep.

  Some youths – maybe three – came out toward the banner, and then soldiers got out of the jeep and shot toward the internationals. Jehan found bits of shrapnel later in her shoes.

  Rafah

  Ghost homes

  Glow-in-the-dark stars in teenagers’ bedrooms

  Tumbling of concrete

  Constant anonymous night-vision telescope.

  February 7th.

  I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls. I think even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. They love to get me to practise my limited Arabic. Today I tried to learn to say, ‘Bush is a tool’, but I don't think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago – at least regarding Israel.