Moderator: This personal account interviews two narratives in alternating chapters, Ahnert's mothers Ester's firsthand description of coming-of-age during, and miraculously surviving, the Turkish sponsor Armenian Genocide of 1915, and her own reflections on her connection to the distant world of her 98 year old mother. Together their stories realize an intimate but accessible terms the vagaries of historical memory and her mother's determination to tell the truth. Margaret Ahnert was born in New York City. She grew up listening to her mother's stories and she pursued a variety of careers. She has produced TV documentaries, she is been a docent in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and she taught art appreciation in the schools and she is a huntress and a fisherwoman. We will see if we hear about that. Please welcome Margret Ahnert.
Margaret Ahnert: Thank you and to me it's amazing that the hunter-fisherwoman got more applause than anything else. It always does. Sure we get that out of the way. Yes, I am a fisherwoman, yes I am a hunter with captain license, and yes I am a huntress and a fisherwoman. Now, if you say, think about those questions about that later, I will answer those first, just as I got this out of the way. And here tonight our, look god it's daylight out here, I feel like its new. But I am here to tell you about my mother Ester. My mother Ester was an amazing woman, she lived her life when she came to this country in the today and tried to forget what she lived through. And what she lived through was the Armenian Genocide in 1915. She was 15 at the time so she could remember very clearly what happened to her. And "The Knock at the Door" is a very symbolic name, there was a knock at her door, her family's door and they said leave now. So, there are been there are many books written about this story and many books written about the holocaust, then there are people who deny the holocaust happened and there are people who deny that the Armenian Genocide happen. So I am here to tell you, not as a historian, not as a scholar, just to tell you a first person of narrative of this tale of my mother. And what happened to her. She didn't tell me these stories immediately, but growing up, my first my first foray into this story was when I was six. And I went to school and some kids pushed me around, they say, we hate you, we hate you. Why do you hate me I said, because you are an Armenian? Why do you hate me because I am an Armenian? Well, our parents make us eat all our spinach because of the starving Armenians. Well, you know, more people remember the starving Armenians and I didn't know what they were talking about. I surely was also starving. My mother was a great cook. We had a great food, I had I had nice clothes and I I had never thought I was starving, so this started at six. It I didn't hear more about it till I was 18 and someone said to me, Margaret you should read "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh". So that sort of the the bible of the first graders who want to read about the genocide, they pick up this book. And I read it and I was very very moved by it because there was a family in that book, called the Bagradian family, and my mother talked to about a family Bagradian family, that saved her. I thought, ah! Could they be related? And it was at that point in my life that I really pursued my mother for her stories. I was relentless and she would say a little and that would be the end of it - and go away. So I say this now quickly and digress. If you have an elderly parent, you have an elderly relative, you have an elderly neighbor talk to them and get their stories and they compels me but you might find yourself the author of a book whatever the stories are, and wherever that at leads you but that's I wasn't thinking about a book at that time I was thinking about a family member. I wanted you know, I wanted to know, so years went by and through those years I worked hard in my life and I put mother's stories down, when I got to finish up my masters degree at Goucher College, I this was my thesis and I really refined it and I worked on it very hard my mother then was 98. My mother said and told me the same stories at 98 that she told me when she was 54, and I thought and in my undergraduate work, I remember reading that memory is an amazing thing. You remember the truth because the truth stays with you and my mother's story is hard truth and it didn't it never deviated I couldn't get more truth from her and I never got less truth from her.The stories were always the same, always. I tried to get more what would then what happened, that's all I know. So it's very interesting and that's all I know is what in this book what she remembered and what she told me and she remembered it over all her whole life time. So she was 15 when they came and knocked on her door. I think I read a little chapter here that or a piece of something here that may help beyond to understand how I came to this. I thought to myself as I read and I researched, what was the rest of the world doing at this time didn't anyone know what they told, was anyone reporting what they saw. So I went to the library and I read the headlines in the New York Times August 18th 1915 Armenians sent to perish in desert. August 27th Turks depopulate towns of Armenian, September 17th mission board tell the Turkish horrors correspondences confirmed the reports of the wiping out of Armenians, was this the genocide it wouldn't being called that in 1915 as the word had not yet entered the lexicon that wouldn't happen till after Hitler's planned extermination of the Jews. What exactly does the word mean anywhere I wonder so they pulled the dictionary from the shelf, genocide: the deliberate and systematic extermination of a nation, racial, political or cultural group. If this was not genocide in 1915 what was it deliberate and systematic were the keywords for me. Today's scholar category with the modern side and the Turkish government denies that it was a genocide it wasn't act of war a result of 1915 of the World War I in 1917, they have a life stories to tell. I can only tell you to read Tanner Akcam's book. Tanner Akcam he wrote 'A Shameful Act'. In his book Tanner historically philosophically and scholarly proves it was genocide. My book doesn't do that. Interestingly now publishers weekly who gave that who gave me a very nice review said my book should be and accompaniment to Tanner Akcam, and Tanner it is a friend and I I emailed him and said hey Tanner may be we should go on a book to work together. His book is he has telegrams. He has Turkish reports out of the files. He spend a year in prison because he dare to say there was that army mean genocide. He has a death threat on his life. In January of this year Hrant Dink an Armenian journalist in Turkey in Istanbul was murdered on the streets, shot plain away and when I spoke to Tanner I said are you going to the funeral. He said yes Margaret ah! Tanner are you crazy to have a bodyguard? He said yes. Now your book comes out Margaret, you'll need one too meet Jim. So, here we are. I am very safe here in Berkeley; I feel safe. But I did have a problem in New York on May 1st. I had been lecturing at Florida Universities and Pennsylvania Universities and large groups of people, I never had a problem. So, like Mary Poppins, I pranced myself off to New York City. And I have my first May 1st, Barnes & Noble paper, anyway I am a Barnes & Noble Upper East Side, in the audience is former Governor Robert Morgenthau, the grandson of Henry Morgenthau who was the Ambassador to Turkey in 1915, is in the audience, and some near and dear friends. And I setup to the microphone as I am now and suddenly five men from the audience in strategically placed different places, stand up, pass out pamphlets and had a new one and I looked at it. It's said Margaret Ahnert, you are a lair. It was no genocide. So I quickly handed it back to. I don't know what else it said because that's the first thing that I saw. And it was very frightening. So the Governor was sitting in his front seat and screaming and honoring was going on and at the corner of my eye in the side of the room, I see the noble people call the police and they hand cuff this men and took them off. And while that was happening, I must tell you I don't know where I got the courage. I have to think my mother was with me. Because in my heart, I was scared but I stood there, just like this. I guess I was frozen. I am not sure what I was. But the Governor asked me questions; then I answered his question as nothing was happening in the room. So it was incredible because it gave no credence to this outburst. I mean, I can look back on that now and seem very intellectual about it. At the moment, it was the only thing I could do was talk to him and I did that. So, that worked. The good news is the New York Times pricked that up and it made a front page column two columns. It was in the Turkish News Papers, the French News Papers and a friend traveling in Spain she said, "Margaret, I would hadn't read an American News Paper in the three weeks. I got on this train in Spain and I bought the International Herald Tribune, and there you are on the front page." So so I guess a bad thing turned into a good thing. But I must tell you that night I went back to little hotel room and I fell into my knees and I was scared. And I said to my mother, "Oh, my god, I have got children, grand-children; what am I doing? I wrote a book about my family. I didn't think it would become controversial. And its not it's a mother-daughter story. When you read this book, you will relate to it if you are Italian, Jewish, German, Swedish, anybody can relate to this, if you have a neighbor who is an elderly lady. Because most of his book. 90 percent of his book is our conversations about last year of her life in the shower room clipping here toe nails, plucking backing hairs from her face. Those are tender tender wonderful moments that I shared with my family I thought. Then suddenly somebody said, "Wow, we want to publish this book." So now it's public. But that's what it's about. Along with it is what she told me happened to her in her life. I will read you a passage here about what happened to her when they knocked at the door. Aksor the deportation word every one in town was whispering. What did it mean? What would it be like? There was no time to think. With Papa gone, we were on our own. Vartouhi quickly tied to canvas over our open wagon filled with food and blankets. She hitched a single cow to pull it, and we fled, joining the caravan of wagons leaving Amasia in my haste, I left my tank well coat hanging behind the door. I had never thought, I would see that coat again. We were only half hour out the town, when a group of Kurds charged down from the mountains and attacked the first group at the front of the caravan. Then the Zaptiehs started grumbling. Someone in the group said they were there to protect us from the Kurds. This was a lie because these soldiers attacked us along with the Kurds, swinging their curve swords in the air, over their heads, screaming and shouting curses. They rode their horses straight into the slow moving crowd of the people. I slipped to the ground, around me people were screaming, some were crushed under wagon wheels, others were bleeding from various parts of their bodies. One horse stamped on a woman next to me, and I heard the loud cracking of her bones breaking. It was like the sound of grandma cracking walnuts, only louder. Another man near me was stuck under a broken wagon wheel, he was holding on to a women's hand, her head was missing those who were not killed on the first charge were robed and beaten. Then the soldiers came for the girls. The prettiest ones were taken first, I watched as soldiers lifted some of the girls by their hair, and threw them over the backs of their horses and rode away. "Asvadzeem!" cried a Grandmom, she pushed me down in the wagon, scratched my face with a sharp rock and rubbed row garlic and mud into the creases. Grandmom always carried garlic in her pocket to keep away the evil eye. Then with a satisfied tone in her voice she said, there this will fester and weeping, you will look ugly. Quickly put on these baggy clothes, and the soldiers won't want you. After the attack it was very quite, we moved slowly with the rest of the group. Around us the silence hung heavy like thick fog. By morning my face was itching and oozing with white pus. I grabbed Vartouhi's to a small hand mirror. Who was this creature staring back at me? I turned away with disgust at the sight of my face. The same face that many had said, was a pretty face. I looked like a monster. No one looked at me. Grandma was pleased with her handiwork. That was only one of several. Now, chapter eight is a kind of a blood and gore chapter. So it isn't all that, so I don't want to you all to just go away and say well god, I don't want to read about another holocaust, I don't want to read about another horrible situation because my mother Ester was funny. She was witty. And she had a tremendous positive attitude. She was practicing yoga, she didn't know it. she took a deep breath, she say to me, now take a deep breath, suck in your air and like if you were down - went with my mother, she could knock you over. And she filled her lungs with air. And then hold it well you know, and then she said, when you don't think you could hold it another second, hold it four more seconds. And I the nurse I said to the nurse I said, can you imagine this, she said, Margaret, your mother is been practicing yoga, breathing all her life. Now did that help her through this? I don't know. She lived to be 98, I do know that. And she was healthy. So positive thinking, her projection of forget bad times, she once said to me Margaret, and the fear the fear and hatred filter down. I have a little story in here about my little grand daughter. Oh I would like to play that one for you because I think you would like it. Anyway, it's about how fear like genes filters down. My mother told me these stories, she was okay. She went forward, then she told me these stories I feared Turks. I remember the time I got in a taxi with a taxi driver and in New York in New York that of self defense, you always look at the name on the taxi, if you have ever lived in New York. You never get a taxi without checking a name out. And I looked when I looked at names and the we had an Armenian sounding name with an I-A-N I would say, are you an Armenian. And if they said, yes. Oh where your parents are from? Or what country, we talk about food and music and all will be very delight. One time I said, "Are you an Armenian?" and the Turk the cab driver turned and said, "No, I am Turkish. Are you Armenian?" And I froze I froze. I couldn't tell him I was Armenian I was scared. so I said oh no I am not Armenian but I have an Armenian friend and she told me that names end in I-A-N and that's why I asked you if you Armenian I was scared on this Turkish cab driver, why? So all the psychology courses in the world tell me that terror like genes filters down, they filters down to my mother she didn't deliberately want this to happen but it happened. I have a chapter in here about having dinner with a Turkish diplomatic and its kind of fun, I wont tell you about it but and he was more than a Turkish diplomat at that time and he is currently living and and pretty prominent, so I eliminated his name from what his position was and I made him a Turkish diplomat and he wanted to take me back to my mother's town in Amasia and its not safe to go back Margaret by yourself with an Armenian name on your passport. That why I took his name out, he will be in big trouble today if anyone know, he had said that anyway I will look him up and I also want to tell you about a couple of emails I got and this is the good news after that May 1st incident in New York I got this wonderful email from Zirak Erdogan, hello there, I just read news that you had a problem with some Turks at a book signing today. I am a Turkish guy living in Australia. I want you to know that there are lots of Turks and across who know what happened to Armenians. Our hearts go to you and your people but don't forget - not all the Turks are races, best wishes may those who died in the genocide he used that word rest in peace. I am so grateful for this email and I will contact this man may be go to Australia and give him a big hug because I know that there are many many Turkish people out there who feel the way this man does, and I am grateful for that. The other email I got was whom Tanner Ackam that I talked about earlier who wrote 'A Shameful Act' he said to get Ms Allison welcome to the club. Well Tanner has had death threats Tanner has has his personal body guard, Tanner is an amazing guy and he is written the ultimate ultimate story that yes it was that you just cant disputed after you read his book so I suggest to read his book. Anyway I apologies I am writing and and I read the coverage about the event in New York so allow you would make it joke welcome to the club. Okay, this is Allison and a lot of other personal staff in here but to get Ms Allison was so good. I was so happy we get that from Tanner because he knows he is Turkish and there are many Turkish people who are sympathetic. But I think they are overrun I don't know what I think because I am not historian this is not what this book is about, this book is about me and my mother and what she told me and what she lived here, what I lived through all this stuff in here about me like should not getting to be able to shave my hairy legs stuff you really never wanted to know but its in here its in here my growing up intimate little mother daughter stories, my mother in the shower in old age home very tender moments anyway, thank you for coming if you have any questions I am happy to answer to.
