58 pages • 1 hour read
Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 7: “Syria 2005”
Chapter 29 Summary: “Going to Aleppo, May 2005”
In 2005, Peter takes a trip to Lebanon and Syria to speak at various universities and meet experts on Middle Eastern history and politics. The US State Department marks his every movement; they do not consider Lebanon a safe place for an American of Armenian descent.
From Beirut, Lebanon, Peter goes to Aleppo, Syria, for more speechmaking, sightseeing, and meet-and-greets with diplomats, bishops, and intellectuals. Aleppo is impressive for its Old World-feel and its passion for history. Upon arriving, Peter “[begins] to sense how serious they [are] in Aleppo, how close they still [are] to the events of 1915, how close the Turkish border [is]” (316).
While in Aleppo, Bishop Shahan Sarkissian, the Armenian cultural leader in Aleppo, arranges for Peter to view documents in the city’s archive. Bureaucrats took records of Armenian refugees that made it to the city during the genocide. Peter sees a picture of his aunts Gladys and Alice with other schoolchildren. From his previous research, he knows that they had come into the city as one of many waves of half-starved, burned, beaten Armenians from death marches. He tours the city, passing many former orphanages, hearing stories of the carnage in the streets produced by the genocide and the dysentery and typhoid outbreaks that came in its wake.
The experience is emotional for Peter. After so long, he collects rich details of his family history in some of the very places that it happened, but the story is heartbreaking. He is doing the personal work of reconciliation and processing systematically denied to Armenians collectively.
Chapter 30 Summary: “Bones”
Peter opens the chapter by talking about Der Zor, Syria, a town on the Euphrates River that became one of the most infamous sites of death during the Armenian Genocide, “the ultimate spot of starvation, killing, death” (333). Peter passes through Der Zor, knowing the city’s history and its symbolism for Armenians. The landscape once contained countless weak, starving bodies, “emaciated, disease-ravaged creatures in makeshift camps” (340). When Peter visits, he sees the immense stretch of desert with “nothing but scrub and tumbleweed, and an occasional flock of sheep” there (340).
Eventually there is a single church up a slope on the empty roadside. Peter’s guide explains that Syria sectioned off this land for Armenians to build a church and memorial because the ground contained so many broken skeletons of genocide casualties. Peter examines the ground and sees scattered fragments of bones on the surface. He starts collecting them in his pockets.
At the time of this trip, the US had already blundered through the early years of the Iraq War. Peter reflects on that war and the America that undertook it. He notes that the US, so rich and powerful, had a healthcare crisis, abject and racialized poverty, and dangerous political ineptitude. He feels more anger.
A few days later, he flies back to the US. In the last scene of the book, he remembers the pieces of bones now stashed in his carry-on and wonders if he will have trouble bringing them through customs. He doesn’t. He watches baseball, drinks a beer, and continues to think about the bones.
Part 7 Analysis
This last section of the book takes place in the Middle East of the early 21st century. Balakian is touring parts of Lebanon and Syria to share his work and meet major social and political figures within Armenian social spheres. The tour is particularly risky for an American because the US is in the early phases of its war with Iraq and anti-American sentiment runs high in the region.
Other chapters in the book have taken place in the Middle East, particularly in Armenia, but they were all historical in content—this is the first time the author himself is abroad in regions directly connected to the Armenian Genocide. He gets new information about his family while touring Aleppo, Syria, where his maternal grandmother temporarily lived with her two oldest daughters (not the author’s mother) and where she almost died from typhus. He also gets to literally hold the bones of his ancestral people in a scattered, superficial graveyard outside of a memorial church in one of the most well-known and wretched killing sites in the Syrian desert. Throughout the entire book, Peter has done work to piece together his family’s and Armenia’s history. It is a fitting end that he visits some of the major sites within that history in the final chapters of his memoir. He is no longer merely an observer or student of the history; through his intellect and his actions, he is a contributor to the ongoing Armenian struggle for recognition, reconciliation, and justice.
Some of the central issues at stake in the book, particularly in the larger context of political and social dynamics across the wide Armenian diaspora, do not have conclusions or closure that Peter can offer at the end of the memoir. Peter appreciates the memorials he sees in Syria and the opportunities to speak in Armenian communities there and in Beirut, Lebanon, but in his career as a scholar and writer of the Armenian diaspora, he has faced regular backlash from genocide deniers and remains frustrated with global political leaders for various issues pertaining to human rights and political competency. For example, Peter laments the election of George W. Bush in 2000, whose administration Peter describes as “usurping men who had come to power and undermined democracy” (343). All throughout the book, the author has demonstrated how the past is never over and done but continues to influence every level of the human experience from the intensely personal to the context of global politics. The lessons from the Armenian Genocide extend beyond Armenians and Turks. Knowing this history can allow any commentator to critically interpret political disarray and international warfare. It is on this lesson of the power of knowledge that the book ends.
Unlock all 58 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features: