FEATURED BOOK REVIEW: THE KNOCK AT THE DOOR BY MARGARET AJEMIAN AHNERT
By Jessica Schneider
Monsters and Critics.com, UK
Sep 14, 2007, 15:01 GMT
Books Features
For anyone who has ever wanted an introduction to the Armenian
Genocide, reading Margaret Ajemian Ahnert’s memoir, The Knock at the
Door, would be a good place to start. The book deals with Ahnert’s
mother, Ester, and how at the ages of fifteen through nineteen,
the Armenian girl has to endure starvation, beatings, and rape-yet
manages to survive. This story, based on the stories that Ester
relayed to Ahnert, talks about how the Armenians were forced out
of their houses, ordered to march for weeks through the desert with
little food or water, undergo regular beatings and killings by the
Turkish soldiers, and how anyone worshipping the Christian religion
or speaking Armenian would result in torture and death.
In an interesting online interview with the author, Ahnert has much to
say regarding the Genocide and the public’s denial of it. In Turkey,
it is against the law to speak of it, and on May 1, 2007, Ahnert was
giving a reading at a New York Barnes & Noble when she had several
Turkish men in the audience stand up and begin to pass out flyers,
claiming she was a liar.
That story hit the news, and it was upon reading about that incident,
that prompted me to purchase the book.
Throughout the story, after having survived the brutal walk through the
desert and being left for dead, Ester is rescued by a woman and then
eventually shuffled through several homes. In one house she acts as a
maid, and upon overhearing some Turkish men bragging about the brutal
ways in which they killed the Armenians, becomes so overwhelmed with
fear that she falls down the stairs and eventually informs the woman
of the house that she must leave. The woman, who at first said she
was willing to treat Ester as a daughter, only allows her husband to
rape Ester that same night. Then, as Ester is sent to an orphanage,
where she is forced to strip down and undergo ‘lice treatment’ as
well as molestation by one of the women, there she meets a Turkish
man who takes her by force, marries her, yet regards her as nothing
more than a slave. Ahnert talks about how during these years, Turks
were allowed to marry Armenians or kill them, but they could not,
under any circumstances, hide them. So because this Turkish man is
willing to marry Ester, she is relatively safe for a while (albeit
still undergoing regular beatings and abuse from her husband).
Several years pass, and then Ester believes she sees her brother on
a wagon passing by. Running out to greet him, he helps her to escape
by informing her of a place to stay. Ester escapes her husband and
goes to this house that dwells one of the few Armenian families
whose lives were spared because they are blacksmiths. The family
takes her in, despite their constant worry of getting caught. Ester
is forced to sleep in the moldy basement with vermin crawling all
over her. Fearing the family would be ready to throw her out, she
does not complain. Eventually, she is able to get to America after
being given a third class passenger ticket and a false passport. But
the insides of the steerage are no better. Larded with roaches and
disease, people are crowded together and must suffer through the
filth until they can arrive at Ellis Island. The book skips back and
forth between Ahnert visiting her mother in a nursing home in 1998,
and her mother’s experiences in 1915 through 1920. Ahnert also has
a scene where she encounters a Turkish cab driver and fears to tell
him that she is Armenian.
This book is one woman’s story-well two actually, and it provides a
personal account of what happened during those years. Through Ester’s
tale, readers will be given an introduction to the Armenian Genocide,
and what those brutal times were like. Similar to that of the Jews,
Ahnert speaks about the famous quote by Hitler in the Holocaust museum
in Washington D.C., where he mentions that no one remembers what
happened to the Armenians (implying that no one will remember what
happened to the Jews either). The Knock at the Door is a memoir more
in line with Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, where both stories serve
to personalize the history, as opposed to viewing it only as dates and
numbers. Angela’s Ashes is the more artful of the two books, while The
Knock at the Door is more straightforward in its spare narrative style.
Worthy of your readership, it is a story that will certainly pique
your interest in wanting to know more.
And if Ester herself were alive to know that, indeed she would
be pleased.