Conversation with Rachel Corrie

Shawqi Issa

Rachel, good morning, do you hear me?! … What a stupid question, of course you hear me, you are everywhere now, and no doubt you know that Gaza is cleaning its monsters, so its flowers can grow again. We knew, us and you, that this had to happen. But it happened a little bit late. We all apologize to you for the delay.

Rachel, the kids of Rafah swear they saw you on that day of cleaning soar above them in the sky smiling. That day Rafah was more beautiful. They said you were like a clear white dove, soaring in lines singing happiness and victory. Do you know what came to my mind? I’ll tell you. Imagine if we could translate the drawings made by soaring doves into musical notes. It could be the most wonderful symphony for peace and justice and victory. What if that dove is you? You will make Mozart jealous, easy on him.

Rachel, the kids in Gaza are arguing whether you were the goddess of love and beauty or the goddess of sacrifice. Many can love and enjoy beauty, but few are able to sacrifice. So then you are the goddess of sacrifice first, and the goddess of love and beauty too.

Rachel, when the Lebanese singer Marcel Khalifa sang the dirge for Kamal Junblat after he was assassinated, he said to him, "If that bullet was able to see your eyes, it would apologize." Rachel, I was thinking if that blade of the bulldozer had the choice when it was reaching your body, what it would do. It would convert itself into pure honey to melt on your lips, so it will be more shiny and blooming, to reflect your smile on the moon light, to distribute it to all kids of the poor, and to the victims in Gaza and New York, Sabra and Hiroshima, Chile and Rwanda, and South Africa. Rachel, do you remember Amy? She also was American. She went to South Africa. What is the difference between South Africa during that time and Palestine? Injustice is injustice anywhere, and the fighters against injustice are the same anywhere. Amy was killed while she was trying to plant a smile on the lips of the black kids.

Rachel, do you remember that holy teardrop from your eye? It was the last action in your first life. A small girl from Rafah in the age of a flower, in the time of the dew, picked it with her tiny little fingers, put it on her brow, and said, "I am now Rachel." We will not allow death to come to Rachel. If we fail to protect you from the tyrants we will carry you in our hearts, and inherit you generation after generation. Rachel, do you remember what Shakespeare said in King Lear? "Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound reverbs no hollowness”, if our voice was not heard by the people in the north, our hearts stronger than the stone itself, it will safeguard you and take you to reach your aim.

A Palestinian Madonna swore that when she went to the spot that your blood made sacred, she saw a jasmine towering in spite of the power of the Caterpillar bulldozer that passed over it without any mercy. Rachel, do you know why the jasmine stayed white? According to poet Omar Alfarra, when the artist in love began to color the flowers, everyone had to bend down to get the color. But the jasmine refused to bend down and remained white, stayed the most beautiful flower. All the flowers bend down for her, she who does not bend, she who does not change color, everything bends down for her.

Rachel, today the land of Gaza will be clean and modest like a surgery room in the hospital. The people of Gaza are getting ready to receive you as a princess. Get up like the Palestinian Jesus. Look at the walls of the Holy Sepulcher Church shaking like an earthquake, urging you to rise. And the land of Nativity in Bethlehem spread out like olive oil for you to dance upon as if skiing, or to dance like the birds of Pelican Lake. Dance and have fun please, Let us rest a little from the feeling of guilt, let us rest a little from the feeling of guilt.

Rachel, you chose the people of Faris Odeh, the little boy who would not stand down from the Israeli tank until one day it killed him. Faris, you know, came back from the dead that day, screamed, and said to me with a voice racing with tears, "If I were Lorca I would say something grander to Rachel than the lament of Ignacio the Matador." An old woman reaching her nineties said, "Why did they kill this beautiful girl?!" I answered her with what the Jewish poet Bialik wrote in his poem: Even Satan himself could not create one who is able to kill a child. The old woman smiled while continuing her slow walk, but Israel’s rulers could. The owner of the home you were trying to protect said, "Ah …. I wish they had demolished all the houses, but kept Rachel. Without her and people like her Americans will not find anyone to respect them as a result of what their rulers do. She made us understand the difference."

Rachel, Rafah is the gate of Asia to Africa, or the gate of Africa to Asia, it is where the two continents meet, meaning you chose to spend your eternity on the line that splits or connects two continents. In the north there was a sea-split or connect with three continents, and you came from a fourth continent. Yes, I know you meant all that. You wanted to give history something special. Usually history writes the winners, but as you are not ordinary you could give us, we the defeated ones for now, the right to write history. Didn’t Oscar Wilde say, "The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it." Didn’t the Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim write the history of the fighter Warda, the social and political activist whose revolution was defeated in Oman? But remember, defeating the righteous is always temporary. We are going through bad times in these days, but the Turkish poet Nathem Hekmat told us, "The best of days did not yet come." I promise when it comes you will be with us. Didn’t Julia Boutros sing for you from Lebanon, "We refuse to die?"

You didn’t record in history an ordinary heroism; you weren’t in a war and got shot by a fatal bullet; you weren’t at a demonstration and got killed by a bullet. Such deaths occur often. But you were there, in front of a home and bulldozer, the home for a family from powerless people, the bulldozer for the biggest two tyrants in our times: Israel and the United States. You watched, you scrutinized, and decided they will not pass. Your feet marched steady with disdain. You looked at the sky, flirted with the stars a little, smiled to the moon, thought of the Star of Bethlehem, it is not far from there, and said to it, "See you," thought of Khalil Gibran when he said, "I want to live the truth. Instead of writing about fire, I prefer to be firebrand burning." Then you took off like a beautiful gazelle, stood high in front of the bulldozer and said to the killer, "Stop." I forgive you, you thought he was human, then what happened, happened.

Rachel, did they scratch your beautiful face? All pretty Arab girls said, "Take my face." Did they scratch your breast? The Milk Grotto next to the Church of Nativity shouted, "Don’t worry, your chest will have Mary’s breast which feed Jesus."

Rachel, we love you more than our martyrs, you are greater than us. We were killed because we were defending our homeland and our freedom, but you were a fighter for all humanity. You made us think again about the definitions. Are you Palestinian?! No, are you American?! Also no. You belong to the country of the human being, you are citizen of all the history, all geography, and the three dimensions.

Rachel, I noticed in your writings, you used relativity when talking about danger. Do you know that Einstein refused to support Israel or immigrate to it?

Rachel, in that fateful third month of the third year of this new century, Israel killed ninety-nine lives, you and ninety-eight Palestinians, sixty-eight before you and thirty after.

Rachel, what you did inspired poets and lovers, you moved them. Suheir Hammad: What greater story to tell? Haroon Rashed: You martyr of the right, you martyr of justice, you martyr of peace, poem is powerless when it’s about you, words failing my lady, and talking is shutting up. Edward Said got up from his death bed to praise you. You know Romeo and Juliet came back from the dead that day, and said, "The enemies of love killed us again." Chilean singer Victor Jara shakes and carries his guitar, forgetting they cut his fingers, and played and sang for you the song of songs. He said more about you than Elton did about Princess Di. Even Jesus dropped tears and said, "This is what my teachings did to my followers." The Egyptian poet Najeeb Sror repeated for you what he wrote before you were born: You say to me the live dog is better than the dead lion. I say you are dead, not alive and choosing the life of a dog. I think Edward Mast asked what we all believed: when she passed out of her single body, did she become as large as the world?

You didn’t know, but Arthur Miller wishes that history remembers him as a human who wrote what he feels. But who other than you brought to perfection writing her feelings. Do you know Michelangelo works day and night to create a sculpture of you to stand next to David. Dostoevsky failed to analyze your personality, so he asked Freud to interfere. He said she is greater than a human being. Homer is writing the Iliad again, as they appointed you to replace Achilles. After his Jerusalem home was demolished several times, Saleem Shawamreh said: Rachel died for us. Rafah kids screamed with what Gibran wrote when he lost his mother. I lost the source of empathy, compassion, and forgiveness; the chest I lean my head on, the hand which blessed and safeguarded me. Rafah children are left without Rachel.

Were you writing the history of our lives in Rafah and Mawasi? Did you start writing Les Miserables again, are you Jean Valjean or his creator?

If only you could have read what Naomi Klein wrote about you. Naomi is great in all that she writes. I love this Naomi more each time I read her. I didn’t know that poor soldier Lynch was born in a town named Palestine. Oh… the paradox, and Oh… the coincidence and necessity. Rachel, how come AIPAC didn’t change the name of that town in the USA? They always change the truth.

Rachel, let us take a little break, did you hear the latest joke? I‘ll tell you. Gogo, meaning George Bush, discovered after years in the Oval Office that 100 percent of the products the US imports are imported from outside the US. Good one, right? You know here we say the problem is the half idiot, because there is no problem dealing with a normal person. And you know how to deal with the idiot. But people don’t know how to deal with the half idiot, especially if he is the President of the United States.

Rachel, I have bad news, they killed Tom. But he didn’t die the way they wanted. He resisted and fought the death with his heart for long days and nights, irritating and fighting them by his heart’s beats. His heart was urging the rulers of London and DC, thinking they might have some feelings of humanity it could move, but they said humanity is not our business. His heart stopped in protest.

Rachel, why for gods sake did you leave the green of Washington. Why did you leave Olympia and Eugene? Didn't you read My Friend Flicka when you were a child, and stay there enjoying the green plains and the horse, or maybe a small beautiful cat? Rachel, childhood innocence is the most important thing in the world. Why didn’t you go to Hawaii as you wrote, and enjoy the beach, the sun, drink and a boyfriend? I know. I know what you will say. When the eye sees truth, it’s impossible to close it again.

Rachel, do the tyrants know that you love basketball because in it you always aim high?

Rachel, is Hollywood going to make a movie about you as they did about that heroic guy who was killed by Kissinger’s allies in Chile? But is there anyone who dares to touch Israel? Maybe Richard Gere, or he is not there yet. I heard that Micheal Ambrosino, who made the documentary, A Journey to the Occupied Land, is proud of you.

Rachel, do you know who is responsible for your death?

First: Israeli rulers.
Second: That part of the Jews in the world who let Israel commit its crimes in their names.
Third: Israeli Jews who know about these crimes and some of them participate in them.
Fourth: Israeli Jews who close their eyes and ears so they won’t feel guilty.
Fifth: American rulers, who without their support and protection, Israel wouldn't be able to continue its crimes and threaten the world's peace.
Sixth: European Rulers twice, first when they killed Jews during the Holocaust and in the period of anti-Semitism, and second now in their support of Israel and their silence about its crimes.
Seventh: The American media, which doesn’t tell the truth about Israel.
Eighth: Arab rulers, who put themselves as servants for the American rulers in order to keep their posts.
Ninth: The corporations, who give or sell weapons and bulldozers to Israel while they know what Israel uses them for.
Tenth: God, who allows all those to continue their crimes.

Rachel, the goddess of heroism and sacrifice, you didn’t have time to tell your people that your government spends more on each Israeli citizen than it spends on the American citizen.

Rachel, the heart who loved the entire world. Why don't your people know you have one of the greatest thinkers, Noam Chomsky, who writes and shouts, "Wake-up and see the truth!" But the democracy of your media does not allow what contradicts the official story. Rachel, advise them to not be like Britney Spears in what she told Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9\11. She said she believed the President. Advise them that the brain is theirs to use. Tell them about Norman Finkelstein and the Holocaust Industry, or about what he wrote in history that Israel uses to confiscate Palestinian land. Similar methods were used to confiscate the land of the Native Americans.

Rachel, did you hear? The guards of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo decided to monitor the human rights violations in North Korea.

At last, Rachel, be calm, and proud of your parents. We all wish to have parents like them. Before saying goodbye, promise me to meet again, maybe in Baghdad or in Kabul, or maybe in Harlem. Or maybe we will meet in the state of Palestine. It’s true there will be thousands of girls named Rachel there, but don’t worry I’ll know you. You will be the most beautiful, and surrounded by angels singing and dancing. We will meet and drink for the falling of tyrants and the victory of love and unity of all people in the human state. There we will crown you its Queen, and your crown will be made of Jasmine, and we’ll forget about religion, race, gender, and color. And peace will spread over, peace will spread over.

Shawqi Issa – Director of Ensan Center for Democracy & Human Rights, Palestine

Edited by journalist Kristen Ess, Palestine