Rachel Corrie was only 23 when she was killed in Gaza by an Israeli Defence Force bulldozer as she demonstrated against the demolition of Palestinian homes. A collection of her writing, just published, and a one-woman play, celebrate the short life of an extraordinary woman
THE PHOTOGRAPH on the memorial website shows a young woman, long blond hair tied back, black and white Palestinian scarf wound round her neck. She is the sort of person you'd see at an anti-war meeting, or taking part in a support Palestine demonstration. She could be your friend at college, a flatmate. Your daughter maybe. Rachel Corrie was all these things, but a lot more besides.
Her book, Let Me Stand Alone, is a collection of her writings from the time she was a small girl, in 1989, to 2003, by which time she was a human rights activist working in Gaza. She had arrived in January and immediately got involved in trying to protect the Palestinians whose homes were being bull-dozed by the Israeli Defence Forces, the IDF.
The writing is edgy, hurried, with messages sometimes ending mid-sentence. When she and her friends try to protect Palestinians engaged in repairing their wells, she writes, IDF bullets hit the ground in front of them. She makes lists of things to investigate: "Play bus, water contamination, sandstorm." Sentences are terse: "Two houses demolished . . . Eid festival continues."
From then on, the tension in her writing mounts, an uneasy reflection of what is happening around her. People are worried about the impending invasion of Iraq, she writes. If Saddam fires his weapons of mass destruction at Israel, will they reach Gaza? And all the while, the IDF escalates its demolition work.
"Mama," she e-mails, "Love you. Really miss you. I have had nightmares about tanks and bulldozers outside our house and you and me inside."
On February 15th, 2003, in common with people all over the world, she joins a march in Rafah, demonstrating against the planned invasion of Iraq. On February 20th, there is only one entry: "Checkpoint closed all day." The bombings, shootings and attacks on Palestinian homes worsen. On March 8th, she visits her friend Fatima, on International Women's Day. On March 12th, she e-mails her father and ends with: " Much love, Poppy. Rachel." This is her last message home. Four days later, wearing her fluorescent jacket, she stands in front of an IDF bulldozer which runs over her, then backs over her already broken body. She was 23 years old.
RACHEL CORRIE was the youngest of three children born to Cindy and Craig Corrie. Cindy has a music degree and works as a community volunteer. Craig, a Vietnam war veteran, used to work as an actuary. Their home in Olympia, near Seattle, is not far from the Pacific coast. Rachel's childhood was a charmed one in which nature was a main player: "I must walk with care/ As I wander in the wood/ That I may crush no flower below my shoes." This was the piece of writing her parents chose to use as a preface to Let Me Stand Alone. She was 10 years old when she wrote it and, as she told a friend of her father's, she was a poet.
"She was always an observer," Craig told me on the phone, speaking from Seattle. "When I took her for a walk, it always took ages because she wanted to stop and investigate everything." Cindy agrees: "We were just used to her writing all the time, lying on the floor writing or drawing." She took her writing seriously, perfecting her craft, honing her words, never afraid to expose herself. Some of the writing is reportage. From an early age, she was a volunteer for various community projects, organising them, energising them, documenting them. She set herself writing exercises, trying out different styles, hiding behind different personas.
When she was 16 she went off to Russia on a short exchange visit. "I know you think Russia ruined me," she later writes in a letter to her mother. Did it 'ruin her'? I ask Cindy. "Well, it made it very difficult for her to settle back into high school again." She had been led to believe that everything bad was to be found in Russia and discovered that this simply wasn't so. Coming back to the smallness of Olympia after that was hard.
"She tried to lead a conventional life," Cindy says, "and she did, for a while. Her brother went to Yale and her sister went to college and so she worked at getting straight As, going to the football games and things like that, but it wasn't her."
Rachel was well aware that she might be a disappointment to her white, high-achieving, middle-class family. "I want to write and I want to see," she says in a letter to her mother. "And what would I write about if I only stayed within the doll's house, the flower world I grew up in?"
She was 19 and ready to take on the world. Russia had just been a taster.
One of the most electric sections in Let Me Stand Alonedescribes Corrie's love affair with Colin, a drug addict who was both charismatic and doomed. It was a time that Craig describes as a "turbulent moment". They parted when he went into rehab, and she went back to her studies and human rights work, though by now she was no longer satisfied with book learning: she wanted to be doing something about the inequality she saw all around her. It was a short step from there to Gaza, and within two months she was dead.
CRAIG AND CINDY CORRIE learned about their daughter's death from local TV. Cindy had just returned from Washington where she had been lobbying their Democratic Congressman, Brian Baird, about the invasion of Iraq.
"We wanted to go to Gaza to bring her body back," Craig says, "but people said don't. We might get in, but not get out again." Brian Baird contacted them and arranged for them to hold a press briefing in his office."He stood behind us," says Cindy. "He had voted against the invasion, but now he holds the view that the US should stay there to work towards the establishment of democracy, and he has lost support over that. But for us, he was great."
Rachel's life was celebrated at a memorial service, held in the gymnasium of her high school. Some 2,000 people turned up, and her former teachers spoke about her.
"Is she buried in Olympia?" I ask. "We don't talk about that," says Cindy. "She's not in Olympia, but we don't say where."
This is a book to be read at many different levels. For me, it is the story of the awakening of conscience, the flowering of a writer and of a daughter brave enough to challenge her parents' politics. (She describes her father's work as neo-liberal.) When her mother writes to her, wondering how much Palestinian armed resistance has contributed to the situation, Rachel replies with a 5,000 word e-mail of such power and righteous anger that it is hard to remember that the writer is only 23.
"You know," says Cindy, "we had to come round to her way of thinking. We had to educate ourselves and find out about Palestine." They found out in the hardest way possible, and yet, because Rachel's writing somehow transcends the horrific manner of her death, they have found a way of coping with the loss of their daughter.
"We were getting ready to think about retiring," says Cindy. "Our family was grown up and gone. We were able to do some hiking together. I was getting ready to travel to Europe, to see something of the world. But after Rachel's murder, Craig just couldn't go back to work."
In addition to the publication of her diaries, there is a one-woman play, I am Rachel Corrie, being performed all over the world. Last year, it was produced at the Galway Arts Festival. Next month, it will be done in Haifa, in Arabic.
"We'll go, and it will be a sort of reunion," says Cindy, "as we'll see lots of old friends." The play, and now the book, are taking up much of their lives. They are over the worst of the grieving, they say, now they think of what they miss. "Her smile," says Cindy, "and the lilt of her voice." Craig adds: "And you know, even when she was 21, she'd come and sit on my lap."
Family and home were what grounded Rachel, that much is clear. That, and the knowledge that her parents were standing by her. While in Gaza, knowing she was never likely to get a "proper" job, she made a list of ways of getting money to finance her human rights work.
"Teach English," she wrote. "Visa. Borrow from Mom."
Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie is published this week by Granta Books (£12 in UK)