September 17, 2024

Ayşenur and Rachel

by Raya Tuffaha

This poem is in honor of two young martyrs killed by Zionist forces while they fought for Palestinian liberation. Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi and Rachel Corrie both called Washington, lovingly nicknamed “The Evergreen State,” home. As we continue to demand the United States enforce an arms embargo on the Zionist entity, we must recognize Washington generates over $70 billion in business from the aerospace industry. For Washington comrades, state weapons and their resistance are homegrown.

In March 2003, 23-year-old Rachel Corrie from Olympia, WA, was repeatedly run over by an Israeli soldier driving a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer. She was wearing a neon traffic vest and peacefully defending a Palestinian home in Gaza from being destroyed, and was crushed to death. Israel investigated itself, found itself inconvenienced but inculpable, and the Bush administration left the issue alone.

Over two decades later, 26-year-old Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was shot in the head by Israeli forces while protesting the occupation in Nablus. Israel has already called her death an accident, despite an autopsy finding the cause of her death was a sniper shot to the forehead. She was volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the same organization Rachel Corrie was part of when she was killed. Eygi was one of the organizers of the Liberated Zone encampment for Palestine on the University of Washington’s Seattle campus, and graduated from UW in May 2024. Biden or Harris have yet to speak to Eygi’s family.

In their names & in the name of every martyr: we’ll see an end to state-sanctioned terror within our lifetime, from the river to the sea, from Turtle Island to Palestine.

—Raya Tuffaha

Ayşenur and Rachel

Ayşenur and Rachel lived 
separately. They were executed 

in foreign heat, with tools 
assembled at home. Today we paint 

their names on recycled cardboard,
march the same laps downtown— 

how evergreen.

Header image: Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi at her graduation from the University of Washington in 2024.

Raya Tuffaha is a Palestinian writer, fight director and actor from Seattle. Poetry collections: To All the Yellow Flowers (2020), apocalypse blues (2022). Words with Seattle Opera, Phoebe
Journal, Ms. Magazine, Button Poetry. BA Swarthmore College, add’l British American Drama
Academy. www.rayatuffaha.com “Let it be a tale.”

Toward a Free Palestine: Resources to Learn About and Act for Palestine

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