“Ya Hussam, inta baa’rif Rachel Corrie?” I asked the taxi driver last Sunday: Hussam, do you know Rachel Corrie?
Sadly, he did not. Dropping the clutch to second gear, we pulled onto the main road running north-south along the coast of the Gaza Strip, from Rafah to Gaza. The sun had risen an hour earlier over historic Palestine and modern Israel. The heat and light was slight. The blue waters of The Middle White Sea, the Arabic translation for the Mediterranean, churned frothily out my passenger window as we drove towards Egypt.
In 2003, Rachel Corrie was killed by an enormous militarized bulldozer, or jiraff in Arabic and doobie in Hebrew. I had covered the case for The Palestine Monitor and been befriended by her family: Sarah, Kim, Craig and Cindy. The parents had been pivotal in my formation in college and inspirational in focusing my energies on Palestine, the Middle East and the greater Mediterranean world. Going to see Rachel was my pilgrimage.
“Bidi inni aa’tiha ihtirami,” I tried to explain to the driver: I want to give her my respect.
Rachel sustained mortal wounds when active in the International Solidarity Movement inside the Philadelphi Strip, a buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt. At the time of her death, Israeli demolition teams under military escort and command were sweeping away Palestinians from the territory. Rachel had tried to stop them by placing herself in front of their bulldozer blades.
Hussam began asking Palestinians how to find her once we drove through Khan Yunis and hit the impoverished and crumbling border town of Rafah – a barrio, shantytown, ghetto or township depending on your lingo. They knew Rachel Corrie.
Black-clad Hamas security forces questioned us as we approached, but were quickly eager to help when I confirmed Rachel and I came from the same state and Hussam sweet talked. He kept driving through broken buildings and ruins of homes ridden with bullet holes and covered with graffit. Quick, inexact construction had half-hidden many messages. One read “THERES NO GOD” - the full message is la illah ila Allah (there is no god but God). Hussam began pointing at white tens roughly the size of my brother’s recreational vehicle (RV).
“Bidak ashouf fanag?” he asked: do you want to see the tunnels?
All of Fate’s doors should be opened.
Inside one of the tents, Hussam and I talked to the young digging and smuggling crew. Aged 19 to 25, with an older boss who was grey but didn’t want anything to do with me, they permitted my filming and taking photographs after some chatting. Mohammed beckoned me to their tunnel and pointed down 25 meters or 70 feet. He then hopped into a plastic seat like a children’s swing and gave the thumbs up to the wench operator. With a whirring, he disappeared down the shaft.
A minute later Mohammed came back up, carrying a friend on his lap. Laughing at my oggling, they slipped the seat behind me, swung me over the six-foot wide tunnel shaft, and released the cable.
I dropped quickly into inky darkness. The twin circles of light above and below me shrunk and grew as the scabby tunnel walls rushed past and the heat intensified. I was dressed for a border crossing – white shirt and slacks – not for spelunking, and felt ridiculous when I hit the bottom of the shaft greeting loudly the diggers.
They were covered in dust and dirt. Yellow and white lights lit a small cavern with bags of gravel and cement – one of Gaza’s most desperately needed materials since the Israeli-imposed sever import restrictions. Crouching around me were three guys about my age. Grime coated their bodies from hair to eyelid, chin to toes. It was an odd internal comparison.
Mohammed crab-walked into the shadows of a small hole. Farther down the tunnel a lantern glowed, illuminating a mine shaft lined with electric wires, a taught steel fiber, and two-by-fours supporting the cieling. After about two minutes the tunnel enlarged vertically and dramatically to a whopping twelve feet of what at the time felt like fresh air. Alas, it narrowed too.
We reached another opening crammed full of machines and men. Five young guys orbited around a worn winch. A mustachioed, jack-hammer-wielding, and long-haired Gazan with a cocked eye and a wicked grin gave a thumbs up and all eyes went to the wall. With a roar and intermittent crumbles, he began etching away room for the winch inside a cavity about the size of a refrigerator.
Above and below, two more tunnels snaked out from the winch junction. Mohammed explain the winch would pull goods through the tunnel, so men would only be need at the entry, junctions and exit points. I had heard that bags were common before the tunnel smugglers began using hard plastic buckets to drag cargo – Gazan’s used to gulp from scarred and scratched soda cans.
One of the workers asked me to take a picture of him – but only of his back. A cave-in had miraculously not killed him a few days before, only leaving three red craters along his spinal chord. I obliged, and if anyone wants to seem them, give a shout.
I respectfully decline Mohammed’s offer to crawl down and through to the other side. The path sloped downwards steeply – the Israelis could bomb us at any minute – and I was beginning to remember my desire to reach Cairo. Later I was to learn tunnels had been bombed that day – but where or when exactly I do not know.
Wishing the diggers well, we again walked like crabs through the dark tunnel back to the exit. Sitting in the seat, I stole one last glance at the vanishing point of Gaza’s integral lifeline.
Without these brave men – again, roughly my age – toiling in darkness, the coastal Palestinians would suffer much more than their already dire straits. While automobiles and armaments go through, all I saw was bags of aggregate.
Back on the surface, a small boy led Hussam and I to the spot where Rachel fell beneath the bulldozers. Tunnel tents, hovels and shipping containers created a maze of steel and plastic atop the golden sand and piles of rock. Concrete buildings were gutted: broken or bullet-ridden. I stooped down and picked up a small rock. Rolling it between my fingers, I walked back to the car under the sun’s furnace.
“Yalla habibi, itla’ illa ma’br al-Rafah,” I said to Hussam: Let’s go my friend, go to the Rafah crossing.
