Nothing could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it. And even then your experience is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and of course, the fact that I have the option of leaving. I am allowed to see the ocean.
If I feel outrage at entering briefly into the world in which these children exist, I wonder how it would be for them to arrive in my world. Once you have seen the ocean and lived in a silent place where water is taken for granted and not stolen in the night by bulldozers, spent an evening when you didn't wonder if the walls of your home might suddenly fall inward, aren't surrounded by towers, tanks, and now a giant metal wall, I wonder if you can forgive the world for all the years spent existing – just existing – in resistance to the constant attempt to erase you from your home. That is something I wonder about these children. I wonder what would happen if they really knew.
I am in Rafah. A city of 140,000 people, 60% of whom are refugees – many twice or three times over. Currently, the Israeli army is building a twelve-meter-high wall between Rafah and the border. 602 homes have been completely bulldozed and the number partially destroyed is greater.
Today, as I walked on top of the rubble, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border: ‘Go! Go!’ because a tank was coming. And then waving and ‘What's your name?’ Something disturbing about this friendly curiosity. To some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids. Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peek out from behind walls to see what's going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks – occasionally shouting, occasionally waving – many forced to be here, many just aggressive, anonymously shooting into the houses as we wander away.
In addition to tanks, there are more IDF towers than I can count. Some just army-green metal, others these strange spiral staircases draped in some kind of netting. A new one went up the other day in the time it took us to do laundry and cross town twice to hang banners. And nowhere invulnerable to Apache helicopters or the cameras of invisible drones we hear buzzing over the city for hours at a time.
We've been wavering between five and six of us internationals. There are requests for constant nighttime presence at a well on the outskirts of Rafah since the two largest wells were destroyed last week, but after about 10pm it is very difficult to move because the Israeli army treats anyone in the streets as resistance and shoots at them. So clearly we are too few.
I went to a rally a few days ago in Khan Younis in solidarity with the people of Iraq. Many analogies were made about the continuing suffering of the Palestinian people and the upcoming occupation of Iraq by the United States – not the war itself, but the certain aftermath of the war.
People here watch the media, and they told me again today that there have been large protests in the United States and ‘problems for the government’ in the UK. So now I don't feel like a complete Pollyanna when I tell people that not everyone in the United States supports the policies of our government.
I'm just beginning to learn from what I expect to be a very intense tutelage in the ability of people to organize against all odds, and to resist against all odds.
I knew a few years ago what the unbearable lightness was, before I read the book. The lightness – between life and death, there are no dimensions at all. There are no rulers or mile-markers. It's just a shrug – the difference between Hitler and my mother, the difference between Whitney Houston and a Russian mother watching her son fall through the sidewalk and boil to death. There are no rules. There is no fairness. There are no guarantees. No warranties on anything. It's all just a shrug, the difference between ecstasy and misery is just a shrug. And with that enormous shrug there, the shrug between being and not being – how could I be a poet? How could I believe in a truth?
And I knew, back then, that the shrug would happen at the end of my life – I knew. And I thought, so who cares? If my whole life is going to amount to one shrug and a shake of the head, who cares if it comes in eighty years or at 8pm? Who cares?
Now, I know who cares. I know if I die at 11.15pm or at 97 years – I know. And I know it's me. That's my job.
Reading from her notebook.
February 11th.
Tufah Checkpoint.
Women and kids on right, men on left, ID passes in their hands.
The women with babies and buckets – all middle-aged.
At 2pm they said the checkpoint would open.
2.40pm – it opens.
Six old men proceed, then the IDF announces only five at a time.
Then came five women with four children and a baby in arms.
A soldier runs forward, yelling.
The women kneel, stand up again, and return.
3pm – five or six men go through.
3.04pm – five more.
3.10pm – the group of women and children proceed again.
3.25pm – five men waiting.
February 20th.
Both of the major checkpoints are closed. This means that Palestinians who want to go and register for their next quarter at university can't. People can't get to their jobs; those who are trapped on the other side can't get home; and internationals, who have a meeting tomorrow in the West Bank, won't make it. We could if we made serious use of our international white-person privilege, but that would also mean some risk of arrest and deportation, even though none of us have done anything illegal.
I am staying put in Rafah for now, no plans to head north. A lot of very nice Palestinians are looking after me. I have a small flu bug and got some lemony drinks to cure me. Also, the woman who keeps the key for the well where we still sleep keeps asking about my mom – wants to make sure I'm calling you.
She goes to the computer.
Checking e-mails.
Rachel,
I am very concerned for you. But I know most of this is not about you, but about the people, the families you are building solidarity with. I have worried a little, because it seems to me that it could be easy to be manipulated by one faction or another. For myself, I feel like I'm fighting a lifetime of indoctrination. Palestinians have really been invisible to me, but you are changing that.
In regards to Palestinian violence, I just abhor any violence. I understand that most are just trying feebly to defend themselves, but here, just the mention of suicide bombing puts up a wall.
There is a lot in my heart but I am having trouble with the words. Be safe, be well. Do you think about coming home? Because of war and all? I know probably not, but I hope you feel it would be okay if you did.
Mama.
She replies.
February 28th.
Mom,
I spent the evening and this morning with a family on the front line in Hi Salam – who fixed me dinner – and have cable TV. The two front rooms of their house are unusable because gunshots have been fired through the walls, so the whole family sleep in the parents’ bedroom. I sleep on the floor next to the youngest daughter and we all share blankets. I helped the son with his English homework a little, and we all watched Pet Sematary, which is a horrifying movie. They all thought it was pretty funny how much trouble I had watching it. Friday is the holiday, and when I woke up they were watching Gummi Bears dubbed into Arabic. So I ate breakfast with them and sat there for a while and just enjoyed being in this big puddle of blankets with this family watching what for me seemed like Saturday morning cartoons.
Then I walked some way to Brazil Block, which is where the big family live, the one that has wholeheartedly adopted me. The other day, the grandmother gave me a lecture that involved a lot of blowing and pointing to her black shawl. I got Nidal to tell her that my mother would appreciate knowing that someone here was giving me a hard time about smoking turning my lung
s black.
I am amazed at their strength in defending such a large degree of their humanity against the incredible horror occurring in their lives and against the constant presence of death. I think the word is dignity.
Of course, we burn out. Of course, it is overwhelming. Whenever I organize or participate in public protest I get really worried that it will just suck, be really small, embarrassing, and the media will laugh at us. Oftentimes it is really small and most of the time the media does laugh at us and of course it doesn't get coverage all over the world, but in some places the word ‘Rafah’ is mentioned outside of the Arab press. If the international media and our government are not going to tell us that we are effective, valuable, we have to do that for each other, and one way we can do that is by continuing our work, visibly.
I look forward to seeing more and more people willing to resist the direction the world is moving in: a direction where our personal experiences are irrelevant, that we are defective, that our communities are not important, that we are powerless, that the future is determined, and that the highest level of humanity is expressed through what we choose to buy at the mall.
Maybe you should try to get Dad to quit his neo-liberal job and become a Math teacher. Maybe you should try to get him to sabotage his neo-liberal job. Do you think he could accidentally dump a lot of dollars very cheaply into international markets? Okay. Sorry. I love you guys. Take care of yourselves.
Writing in notebook.
Set up system for media work
Prepare paragraph for rally
Go to Block J and investigate home
Stay and work tonight
Call Dr Samir.
Checking e-mail.
Todd!
Reading e-mail.
Hey you!
Keep up the strength. It is much needed in this world. You really make me want to go there.
She replies.
Holy shit, Todd – come here! The work we do needs people who know how to support this community, not just start our own separate ‘international solidarity show’. The people here are incredible.
Come here come here come here come here come here come here come here come here come here come here.
Writing in her notebook.
Call Gili for talk with Alice
Plan for Women's Day
Saturday am – choose new house.
At the computer.
March 1st.
10.30am – three internationals joined four men at the El Iskan water well. It provides 25% of Rafah's water supply.
Workers at the well reported being fired upon on Thursday.
Despite guarantees of safety and presence of banners and megaphones, activists and workers were fired on several times over a period of one hour, close enough to spray debris in their faces.
For information about the report and other issues related to the destruction of civilian water supplies in Rafah, please contact Rachel.
Writing in her notebook.
We need:
Battery-charged striplights
Megaphone
Lamps
Fabric
Envelopes.
Checking e-mail.
Dad . . .
She reads.
Rachel,
I find writing to you hard, but not thinking about you impossible. So I don't write, but I do bore my friends at lunch, giving vent to my fear. I am afraid for you, and I think I have reason to be. But I'm also proud of you – very proud. But as Don Remfert says: I'd just as soon be proud of somebody else's daughter. That's how fathers are: we're hard-wired not to want our children, no matter how old they are, no matter how brave they are, and no matter how much good they are doing, to be subject to so much threat or even to witness so much suffering. You may say (have said) that it is wrong for me to stick my head in the sand; but I say I am only trying to (or just wishing I could) stick your head in the sand – and that's different. Hard-wired. Can't be changed on that aspect of the issue.
She replies.
Hi Papa,
I feel like sometimes I spend all my time propagandizing Mom, and assuming that she'll pass stuff on to you, so you get neglected. Don't worry about me too much, right now I am most concerned that we are not being effective. I still don't feel particularly at risk.
I am trying to figure out what I'm going to do when I leave here.
One of the core members of our group has to leave tomorrow, and watching her say goodbye is making me realize how difficult it will be. People here can't leave, so that complicates things. They are also pretty matter-of-fact about whether or not they will be alive when we come back here. I really don't want to live with a lot of guilt about this place – being able to come and go so easily. I know I should try and link up with the family in France, but I think that I'm not going to do that. I would just be angry, and not much fun to be around. It seems like a transition into too much opulence right now – I would feel a lot of class guilt the whole time.
Let me know if you have any ideas about what I should do with the rest of my life. If you want, you can write to me as if I was on vacation at a camp on Hawaii learning to weave. One thing I do to make things easier here is to utterly retreat into fantasies that I am in a Hollywood movie, or a sitcom starring Michael J. Fox. So feel free to make something up and I'll be happy to play along.
I remember the morning I walked with Colin to Puget Pantry to get cigarettes and a few last-minute prizes for a bingo game at work. It was my last day as ‘drop-ins coordinator’ at Behavioral Health Resources – a community service for mental-health clients. We met once a week to develop social skills.
I convinced Colin to walk with me because Puget Pantry had ‘The Who's Tommy Pinball’.
On the radio the announcers were talking about giving blood.
I asked the man behind the counter what happened.
‘Two towers. Someone bomb.’
‘Someone bombed the World Trade Center?’
‘Airplanes.’
Colin and I sat on the sidewalk beneath the payphone. We thought it might be World War III. I called my dad.
I figured if it was World War III, being ‘drop-ins coordinator’ was a damn fine situation to go out in.
I took the clients out
in the company car
for insurance reasons today
to Dairy Queen
and purchased them all dip cones and French Fries
with company cash
not my own
for ethical reasons
and when they offered me a fry
I did not accept it
also for ethical reasons
but instead ate only
ketchup and fire sauce with my finger
and they confessed
one by one that their voices were accusing me of hypocrisy
so I initiated a long talk about their trust issues
and they each cried a little
and Jim lost his appetite
so we processed that while the butterscotch shell wilted off his
dip cone
and he cried some more
and called me a hairy little bitch sabotaging his ice-cream day
so I refocused him
on his own anxiety
and asked if he wanted to go back to the hospital
and he said
fucking hell
no
I do not and
I said I hear that you're feeling angry
but you'll have to use appropriate social skills and language
or there won't be anymore Dairy Queen
and then the clients got very escalated
and asked me just what exactly I was threatening to do
to Dairy Queen
You power drunk little
overeducated slut
and I put everyone on timeout
to practice their deep breathing
and then everybody's dip cones melted
and the cones got all soggy
and I think April tried to kick me in the shin beneath the table.
By the time timeout was over
the surface of our table was completely decompensated
and Jim was whispering to himself
between deep breaths
and I gently asked if he was responding
to internal stimuli
and he made an obscene gesture with his right hand
and spit in my reservoir of ketchup and fire sauce
and then the Dairy Queen guy saw our table and
asked us to leave.
On the ride back in the company car
the clients asked me
how can we maintain a healthy and goal-directed outlook on
our lives
when the very people who are paid to empower
and advocate for us
allow our dip cones to melt
and make veiled threats against Dairy Queen
and sometimes appear to intentionally make us cry?
and I said
have you noticed those lovely clouds over there
on the horizon all rosy and backlit by the sun?
why don't we all focus on the rosy clouds and practice our
relaxation skills?
and they said, yes, we have
noticed
back in the Dairy Queen
when you made us breathe
and please desist from using the word we as a transparent and
superficial attempt
to transcend the client/counselor relationship and
persuade us to
trust your
bony ass
and I said
what's that like for you
and they said
shut it – okay.
hippie?
our voices are telling us you
suck ass
and really need to get laid
and I bracketed my personal feelings and pulled over
My Name is Rachel Corrie Page 3