Five years on, her diaries are being released
- The Observer, Sunday 2 March 2008
Peace activist Rachel Corrie is shown at the Burning Man festival in a photo from September 2002, in Black Rock City, Nevada. Photograph: Denny Sternstein/AP
It is impossible to underestimate quite how much life for Rachel Corrie's family has changed since she was killed by an Israeli army Caterpillar D9 bulldozer in the Gaza Strip on 16 March 2003. As Rachel's elder sister Sarah puts it: 'What was normal doesn't exist for us now.'
'After Rachel was killed.' When I meet the Corries, it swiftly becomes clear that there is a great deal they want to speak out about, but it is these four words, heavy with loss, that they have repeated most over the past five years.
Before Rachel was killed trying to prevent a Palestinian home in Rafah from being demolished, they were a pretty ordinary West Coast American family. It has been said in the past that she came from a left-leaning, alternative background, but this is not strictly accurate. Craig Corrie is an insurance executive, who has spent 24 years of his career working for the same firm. Cindy Corrie is a musician and teacher. Since the mid-Seventies they have mostly lived in the same slate-grey house in Olympia, a small town with many coffee shops an hour's drive out of Seattle, and it was here that they raised their three children, Chris, Sarah and Rachel. True, the Corries liked to debate politics around the kitchen table. They also liked to talk about the cats and the chickens, going skiing at the weekend, the vegetable plot, the family holiday cottage in Minnesota. Whenever the conversation did turn towards the Palestinian issue, Craig and Cindy's sympathies would instinctively fall on the Israeli side.
After Rachel was killed, life changed abruptly. Over the past five years they've had to deal with the loss of their youngest daughter, at the age of 23. Cindy, a quietly spoken woman not given to over-statement or, indeed, self-pity, describes a period of mourning that will never really end.
Rachel's parents and sister have not returned to their jobs, although their schedule is relentless. Last week Craig and Cindy were in Vancouver. Next week they're heading to Alabama. As part of their work for the Rachel Corrie Foundation, an organisation they set up after their daughter died, to promote peace and justice in the Middle East, there are school talks and early-morning radio interviews about the human rights situation in Gaza and the West Bank, lobbying to have her death properly investigated and campaign meetings supporting their bid to fulfil Rachel's ambition to establish a sister city project between Rafah and Olympia. Twice they have visited the contentious 40km by 10km strip of land where Rachel died. Before Rachel was killed, Cindy had never been to Europe, let alone the chaotic, squalid, potentially dangerous refugee camp that is Rafah.
The routine of day-to-day life has been cast aside. Their two-acre garden, from where you can see the creek where the children used to swim in the summer and the rushes in which they'd play hide-and-seek, has an elegiac, abandoned feel. They're away so often the family cat now lives with Sarah. Even if Cindy had the time to cook dinner, she'd have nowhere to serve it up. Every surface of the house is smothered with paperwork.
Rachel had been a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, a non-violent pro-Palestinian activist group. Within days of her death, the eloquent and vivid emails that she had sent from Gaza were published, with the consent of the Corries, in the Guardian. In 2005 they became the inspiration for an acclaimed play, My Name Is Rachel Corrie, based on Rachel's writing. Following two sell-out runs in London and a controversial last-minute cancellation in New York, the dramatic monologue, which follows Rachel's life from messy teenage bedroom through to Palestinian refugee camp, has been performed across America and Canada. Later this month, on the fifth anniversary of Rachel's death, it will be staged in Israel and the Corries will be there to watch the first performance in Arabic. This is a typically frenetic month. Next week sees the publication of Let Me Stand Alone, a collection of Rachel's writing and drawings from the ages of 10 to 23, the final piece written four days before she was killed.
Craig and Cindy Corrie have become well known in Olympia. This modest middle-aged couple with silver hair and sensible waterproof anoraks - in the winter it rains so much in this part of the world that umbrellas are pointless - are stopped in the street. Teenage girls in skinny jeans hover, wanting to say hello to the parents of Rachel Corrie. Cindy, in particular, lights up, as though caught in the glow from a torch beam. I ask Sarah if her mother and father are often approached.
'All the time,' she says. 'I've got used to it.'
'In the first hour after Rachel was killed,' Cindy recalls, 'I remember saying: we have to get her words out.'
I'm sitting with Cindy and Sarah in one of Olympia's oldest coffee shops, a place where the Corries used to come as a family when the children were growing up. One by one they piece together the events of 16 March 2003. It was a humdrum Sunday. Sarah, not long married to her husband, Kelly, was living in the family home while her parents were based temporarily in North Carolina, where Craig was working.
'I caught the end of a message on the answer machine, someone saying, "I just heard the sad news,"' says Sarah, 'and it dawned on me. It was something to do with Rachel.' She found out her sister had died by reading the ticker tape along the bottom of the television screen: 'Olympia woman killed in Gaza.'
'My first thought was that maybe it wasn't Rachel. My next was that Mom and Dad didn't know. I started trying to dial and I remember looking at the handset and thinking, "I don't know how to punch in the numbers."'
Visit My blogs for a no nonsense, serious discussion of
burning issues facing the humanity :
burning issues facing the humanity :
__._,_.___
| Reply via web post | Reply to sender | Reply to group | Start a New Topic | Messages in this topic (1) |
.
__,_._,___
--
Visit my Blog for a no nonsense, serious discussion of problems facing the humanity:
https://sites.google.com/site/yaqeenweb/home/
--
Be Carefull in Islamic Discussions;
Disrespect (of Ambiyaa, Sahabaa, Oliyaa, and Ulamaa) is an INSTANT BAN
Abuse of any kind (to the Group, or it's Members) shall not be tolerated
SPAM, Advertisement, and Adult messages are NOT allowed
This is not Dating / Love Group, Sending PM's to members will be an illegal act.
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Karachi-Friends" group.
To post to this group, send email to karachi-Friends@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
karachi-Friends+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Karachi-Friends" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to karachi-Friends+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
No comments:
Post a Comment