Interview with Jen Marlowe

author : Chris Allert | Jen Marlowe topic : Palestine | Rachel Corrie | Olympia Rafah Sister City Project | Rafah | Darfur

by Chris Allert

Jen Marlowe is the author of Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival (Nation Books), which is included in the Best American Non-Required Reading Collection 2007. (http://www.darfurdiaries.org ) She is directing and editing Rebuilding Hope, a film about South Sudan, ( http://www.rebuildinghopesudan.org ) and writing a book and a play about Palestine and Israel. Her previous film was Darfur Diaries: Message from Home. She serves on the board of directors of The Friends of the Jenin Freedom Theatre ( http://www.friendsofthejeninfreedomtheatre.org ) and is a founding member of the Rachel’s Words initiative ( http://www.rachelswords.org ). Her writing can be found online in The Nation, Alternet and Counterpunch. She will be speaking at the Fifth Annual Rachel Corrie Memorial on March 16 at the Olympia Ballroom.

Chris Allert: How did you begin to care about Palestine?

Jen Marlowe: Starting to care about Palestine came from being taught that I was supposed to care about Israel. I’m Jewish. I grew up being very active in the Reform Jewish movement, and went to Reform Jewish youth group and camp. I was not taught anything about Palestinians in the Israel education I got growing up. I wasn’t taught that they were terrorists, or anything like that. But Palestinians were completely absent from the narrative we were taught in camp and in Hebrew school. We were taught simply that Israel was good, that they were the people that turned the desert green.

I never thought about it much until after I went to spend a year in Jerusalem 1997 on a Dorot Foundation Fellowship to Israel. Almost immediately when I arrived I began to confront the real situation. On my second day in Jerusalem I had some long conversations with Palestinian merchants I met in the Souq in the Old City. I heard people talking about how another intifada was going to erupt, about occupation and what that meant. I had only heard what I had learned in camp, and what I saw on CNN, and it was not at all connected to what people were saying here. So for me, becoming concerned about this was obvious. I didn’t know, and now I know. I have to find out more about this, and I have to figure out how I can respond to it.

CA: When you heard the play “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” was cancelled by the New York Theater Workshop in March 2006, what did you think and how did you feel about it?

JM: I felt first and foremost devastated for Cindy and Craig [Corrie]. I heard the news from Cindy even before the story broke. I remembered how excited she was about the whole process of the play happening. She gave me a copy of the script right after it was perfomed in London, and I sat in her living room reading it, I was completely blown away by what I was reading.

Before then, I had only read Rachel’s dispatches from Gaza. The play opened up this whole other window into who Rachel was. Obviously I know Rachel’s writing doesn’t capture who she was as a person, I can’t ever say that I now know Rachel because of what I’ve read, but I’ve had insight into a piece of her, which was her writings. The play was the beginning of that. It was extremely powerful, and I felt very protective of the play. This is extremely important, the things that Rachel was saying, writing about her evolution as a person in the world. So on a personal level, I felt devastated, thinking about what this cancellation would do to Cindy and Craig.

But I wanted to respond on another level, as well, from my belief that it is important for this play to be heard, it was important to resist efforts to suppress this voice, and generally to resist the growing climate of fear and intimidation that’s been so pervasive. And it’s really wonderful that the play is now having successful performances all over the US and the world!

CA: How many times have you been to Rafah? What is it like there?

JM: The first time I’d been to Rafah was about six months after Rachel was killed. I think I’ve been to Rafah about four or five times now, and to other places in the Gaza Strip many more.

My first trip to Rafah is imprinted on my brain. It’s among the most depressing places I’ve been to in the world, and this includes Afghanistan, and Darfur. I’d been to Jenin refugee camp just a few weeks after it was flattened in 2002. In Rafah, I remember standing not far from where Rachel was killed. The Nasrallah house was still standing then, but everything else around it was destroyed. Bulldozers were at work, pushing away the rubble of destroyed houses. There was something about the continuous, slow, grinding, steady destruction that was so depressing. And, of course, in the midst of that, are thousands and thousands of people insisting on continuing to live their lives, to think about their children’s futures, which is incredible.

CA: What are your impressions of the Nasrallah family?

JM: What struck me the most is the effort they put into making sure that their children have cheer and joy. You saw the pictures of Flat Stanley with them. I showed them this paper doll, and Dr. Samir’s face lit up. He was doing silly poses with the kids, trying to make his children laugh and encouraging them to be as silly as possible. They understand that in the midst of all the trauma that is life in Rafah—if your kids are going to have a shot at being healthy, they need to play, they need to laugh, they need to be silly. They take this really seriously, it seemed to me. Both Khalid and Dr. Samir make sure, very intentionally, that their children laugh. That’s some pretty phenomenal parenting.

CA: I understand you’ve read “Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie”. Can you talk about the book?

JM: I probably read the manuscript six or seven times. Every single time I would read it, I’d find myself having to put it down to contemplate further something that Rachel wrote or to think about a question that she posed. Even at the point where I was supposed to be only checking for typos, even then I’d find myself distracted from my search for misplaced commas by something I read.

To me that’s a sign of really important writing. It challenges us. My world-view is probably somewhat similar to Rachel’s, but I was also challenged, I was pushed, I was stretched in really wonderful ways by what I was reading.

CA: You’ve been to a lot of places besides Palestine. What drew you to Africa? What connects all the places you’ve been together?

JM: My engagement in the world started in Palestine and in Israel. The more exposure I had to that conflict, and then the more exposure I had to other places, including Sudan and Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the more I began to see how connected the underlying issues are. That’s how my focus expanded. The issues in Palestine and Israel have a lot of similarities to the issues in many other places.

Specifically what led me to Darfur was responding to the growing atrocities there that at the time were not being covered by the mainstream media. Two colleagues of mine were going over there to make a film, and I became a part of that project. That has deepened my involvement in not just Darfur, but in all Sudan, and that’s connected to Chad and Kenya and beyond. It’s all interconnected.

It’s hard to put things in a nutshell, but basically what I believe connects these places are structures in the world of power and privilege. Who has access to that? Who doesn’t? How are people trying to get access to that? How are those who have it trying to maintain and expand it? And who pays the price? Whether you’re looking at it on a very local level and or at a global level, these questions apply.

I feel hopeful when I see struggles for human dignity and liberation finding connections to other similar struggles. If we are going to challenge the constructs of power and privilege in any real way, then we have to connect different struggles. Otherwise we’ll continue to stamp out little fires here and there while we’re being engulfed in a huge flame. So things like women stitching Che Guevara wall hangings in Rafah is a small signal of those kinds of connections that are important to nurture and to foster.

I’m working on a book right now with a colleague who spent 10 years in Israeli Prison, and then spent the next 10 years of his life working toward non-violent peace and justice and reconciliation work. He told me that in the 1970s, that the example of Vietnam really fed the Palestinian national liberation movement. The Vietnamese ability to shake off America provided a huge source of inspiration for Palestinians wanting to shake off the Israeli occupation.

CA: When you were in Palestine, was there anything people there wanted to say to people here?

JM: Well, I didn’t ask that specific question. The question that I was asking more was, “What can we do to work in solidarity with you?”

People had lots of ideas, but there was very sadly a sense of frustration, a questioning of how much of an impact we can really have. I think it meant a lot to people that I was there asking those questions because it was a sign that the isolation imposed on Palestinians in Gaza is not complete and will never be complete as long as there are those of us in the outside world who insist on paying attention, and who fight against the right to starve and crush 1.5 million people into some kind of submission.

CA: Did you get a chance to talk to anyone in Rafah about the Sister City project?

JM: Definitely. People and organizations that I met with in Rafah see themselves as being a part of a connection between Rafah and Olympia. Where we got the embroidery is one such place. That project grew out of the Rafah-Olympia sister city project. The Rachel Corrie Center for Children and Youth also wants to work on connections between youth in Rafah and youth in Olympia. What seemed important to the people I met was being able to link the people and projects. I didn’t get the sense that an official seal of approval was what mattered so much as really developing those relationships and doing work through those relationships.

CA: What do you think we can do in this country?

JM: I can’t give a laundry list of how to change the world. I’m asked this question a lot when I talk about Darfur. I consciously don’t give recommendations of specific tasks because I don’t want to encourage spoon-fed activism, where we can sign a petition or go to a demonstration, and then pat ourselves on the back and feel absolved rather than truly engaging in the long and difficult struggle.

When it comes to specifically resisting the seige on Gaza, there are lots of specific actions you can take, and there has been some success. The Palestinian-International Campaign to Break the Siege got a convoy of humanitarian aid through Karni Crossing just a few days ago. The convoy was stopped a month ago. With weeks and weeks of work on it, and getting the UN involved, they got the convoy in.

But more than recommending a specific action, I want to challenge people to make the choice of whether or not and, more importantly, how they are going to take part in the struggle. Because you are a part of what’s happening in this world. Even if you do nothing, you’re still a part of it.