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Once again about Balakian's The Black Dog of Fate

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  • Once again about Balakian's The Black Dog of Fate

    Once again about Balakian's The Black Dog of Fate

    By Hovhannes Yeranian

    Yerkir/arm
    October 29, 2004

    This is the forth article Yerkir publishes about Peter Balakian's
    wonderful novel. However, it is impossible to capture the literary and
    aesthetic value of the book even through a series of articles. What we
    are most concerned with in this article is the starting point of the
    novel.

    Balakian's book on the Armenian Genocide, which is the best piece on
    genocide I have ever read, is based on his childhood memories. The
    strangest and the most important thing to note here is that during his
    childhood the author knew nothing about the greatest tragedy of his
    nation. His family escaping from the Genocide settled in USA and did
    their best to protect the child from any knowledge of the terrible
    tragedy so that it would not poison his life.

    I was born and grew up in the former region of Masis which was
    populated with Azeri Turks. There was a small river that divided our
    village. It was the border river of our childhood, our Araks beyond
    which the Turks lived. I spent my childhood fighting them. We used to
    cross the river, defeat the Turk boys on the other side and set up our
    flag with red pioneer neckties.

    At night the Turk boys used to destroy our flags and tear our
    neckties, so the next day our fights would start anew. That was when I
    understood that we needed border guards to guard at night what we had
    conquered during the day.

    Of course, sometimes we had to escape, sometimes we lost our
    fights. The enemy outnumbered us as it has always happened throughout
    centuries. Some of my friends were injured in those fights. But it
    wasn't these losses that mattered. What mattered was the losses that
    were growing in our hearts.

    Balakian spent his childhood playing baseball and listening to
    rockâ=80=99n'roll. How could such a childhood inspire the best book
    on the Armenian Genocide? At first sight there seems to be a mystery
    here. There was a family secret, the buried pain that was destined to
    cause a revolution in the poet's worldview.

    His childhood was not humiliated by the pain of incurable wound as was
    my childhood. This is why the best film and the best book on the
    greatest painof our nation were created on the other side of the
    ocean. These are the night guards of our daytime victories.

    These examples suggest a very important conclusion - we have to be
    very careful when we inevitably introduce our children for the first
    time to thetragedy of our nation.

    This is a very difficult task because none of the answers I suggest to
    my son' s question why they managed to do this with our nation seem to
    be convincing and logical to him. Peter Balakian came to ease this
    task for us. You can give The Black Dog of Fate to your children to
    read without worrying about the answers you might have to find once he
    reads it.
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