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14 The Armenian Reporter | February 7, 2009 Community Peter Balakian discusses the new edition of his Black Dog of Fate by Lola Koundakjian NEW YORK – It used to be nearly impossible to find an English-language book, published by a major house, that dealt with personal memories interwoven with the topics of the Armenian Genocide, the emigration of survivors, or Armenian freedom fighters. The tide has changed thanks in part to Peter Balakian ’s groundbreaking work, Black Dog of Fate. Continuously in print since 1997, with 23 editions, it has been translated into Armenian, Dutch, German, Greek, and Turkish. [Today the firmly established genre includes recent books such as Skylark Farm by Antonia Arslan (English translation from the original Italian, published in 2007), The Knock at the Door by Margaret Ajemian Ahnert (2007), My Grandmother: A Memoir by Fethiye Cetin (U.S. edition published in 2007), Marie-Antoinette Varténie Arzoumanian- Bédanian ’s Traverse Mère de Dieu - Marseille (published in French in 2003), and Nancy Kricorian ’s Zabelle (1999) and Dreams of Bread and Fire (2004).] This month, Basic Books, a division of the Perseus Books Group, published an expanded, tenth-anniversary edition of Black Dog of Fate , with two additional chapters. Recently I caught up with Mr. Balakian during his winter break in Europe, for a conversation about the new edition. When asked about his expectations regarding public reaction to the book, Mr. Balakian said he had none. “I was just happy it was published,” he noted. Embraced as a modern classic, Black Dog of Fate was awarded the PEN/Albrand Prize for Memoir, was a New York Times Notable Book for 1997, and recognized as Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times , Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal . Publishers Weekly called the book “A prose masterpiece by an acclaimed poet,” and the Philadelphia Inquirer hailed it as “a landmark chapter in the literature of witness.” Author Chris Bohjalian said that when he read the book, he saw in it echoes of his own childhood. In 1997, New York Times reviewer Dinitia Smith wrote that authors such as Carol Edgarian , Leslie Ayvazian , Mark Arax, and film director Atom Egoyan , in addition to Mr. Balakian, have “at the heart of their work . . . a search for justice and acknowledgement.” It is therefore gratifying to learn that Mr. Balakian’s book is now taught at numerous U.S. colleges, universities, and secondary schools. “Students and teachers are using it in the classroom fairly consistently,” Mr. Balakian said, adding that students send him emails and letters as they write reports on the book and the Armenian Genocide. He A revised edition of Peter Balakian’s Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir includes two new chapters. said that they ask good questions, and that it is rewarding to be in dialogue with them. Asked about current front-page stories about genocides around the globe and how the citizens of the world and their leaders react when they read such news, Mr. Balakian said he believes that “the general population knows more about the concept of genocide today than ever before,” due largely to genocides in the Balkans, Rwanda, and Darfur in the past decade. “Certainly some heads of state and governmental organizations, at least in Europe and perhaps here - and we’re hopeful with the Obama administration on human-rights issues - are realizing that they must make stopping genocide a priority. Whether this will happen remains to be seen.” In its December 7, 2008 issue, the New York Times Magazine published an excerpt from the latest edition of Black Dog of Fate (see below), in which Mr. Balakian describes his trip to Lebanon and Syria in 2005. “I had a beautiful experience in Beirut and Aleppo lecturing in May of 2005,” he said, and added that he couldn’t believe the size and intensity of the audiences. He found the Armenians there to be highly engaged in their history and culture, and said he learned a lot from them and being in the Armenian neighborhoods of those great cities. After his lecture in Beirut at the 50th-anniversary celebration of Haigazian University, Mr. Balakian continued on to Aleppo, where he discovered vestiges of his grandmother’s refugee life, and then to Der-Zor. “I had no idea I would find my grandmother’s world in Aleppo, but I’ll leave that story for readers to read about in the new chapters [of Black Dog of Fate ,]” Balakian said. Commenting on the book’s translation into Turkish, Mr. Balakian credited publisher Ragip Zarakolu, the human-rights activist and director/owner of the Belge Publishing House. “Zarakolu is a brave man who has done so much to try and bring intellectual freedom to Turkey,” Mr. Balakian said. “The Turkish edition of my memoir is a beautiful book.” Although figures are not available for the translation’s sales in Turkey, Mr. Balakian believes that it circulates along a non-mainstream path but that it gets read. The Armenian edition came out in 2002. Two years later, Mr. Balakian traveled to Armenia for a book tour, which he recalls as a wonderful experience. Another indication of Mr. Balakian’s acclaim in Armenia was that he was given honorary membership in both the Writers’ Union and the Academy of Sciences. Since the original edition of Black Dog of Fate , Mr. Balakian has appeared widely on television and radio shows including “ABC World News Tonight,” “Charlie Rose,” and Terry Gross ’ “Fresh Air” (NPR). No doubt the list will expand after Mr. Balakian’s tenth-anniversary book tour is announced in the near future. Mr. Balakian is also the author of The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response, a New York Times bestseller, first published in 2003. In addition to his writings, Balakian has co-translated (with Aris Sevag ) and edited an eyewitness account of the Armenian Genocide written by his great-uncle, Grigoris Balakian (1873–1934). The translation, titled Armenian Golgotha, will be released on March 31. Bones: an excerpt from the revised edition of Black Dog of Fate by Peter Balakian For Armenians, Der Zor has come to have a meaning approximate to Auschwitz. Each, in different ways, an epicenter of death and a systematic process of mass-killing; each a symbolic place, an epigrammatic name on a dark map. Der Zor is a term that sticks with you, or sticks on you, like a burr or thorn: “r” “z” “or” — hard, sawing, knifelike. Der Zor: A place to which hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915 and 1916 were forced to march, a final destination in the genocide of the Armenians carried out by the Ottoman Turkish government under the cover of World War I. In May 2005, after I was invited to lecture in Beirut through the auspices of the U.S. State Department, the Armenian church arranged for me to travel into Syria — to Aleppo, an important city of refuge during the Armenian genocide, and farther east to Der Zor. The highway from Aleppo followed the Euphrates River through Syria toward the Iraqi border. The river appeared and then disappeared, fresh and flowing and teal green, not brown and sluggish as I had imagined it, and certainly not red with blood and clogged with corpses as recorded by eyewitnesses during the worst period of the genocide. By noon we were passing through the commercial district of Der Zor city. The streets buzzed with cars and mopeds as we drove up to the high stone facade of the Armenian church, called Holy Martyrs. The Der Hayr (parish priest) ushered us inside. Downstairs, under the sanctuary, there were archways and a giant marble pillar that rose up within a large opening in the ceiling. Circling the pillar were glass cases containing bones and soil. Hundreds of bones: partial skulls, femurs, tibias, clavicles, eye sockets, teeth. Case by case. Bones and more bones. I asked the Der Hayr where they came from. “You’ll see soon,” he said. And after mezze we were off farther to the east. I realized now that Der Zor was a huge region of arid land. After a couple of hours of nothing but the occasional flock of sheep, the car stopped in the middle of nowhere, and up the hill at the side of the road I saw a small chapel of white stone. “This is Margadeh,” my guide, Father Nerseh, said. “About 15 years ago, the Syrian government was doing some exploration for oil here and put their steam shovels in the ground, and piles of bones came up.” “Right here,” I said pointing down. “Yes.” He explained that the Syrian government had offered the Armenian church a plot of land for a memorial. I walked up the slope toward the chapel. I put my hand in the dirt, grazing the ground, and came up with hard white pieces. “Our ancestors are here,” I muttered. Then Google launches free Turkish translation service I began, without thinking, picking up handfuls of dirt, sifting out the bones and stuffing them in my pockets. I felt the porous, chalky, dirt-saturated, hard, infrangible stuff in my hands. A piece of hip socket, part of a skull. Nine decades later. I filled my pockets with bones, compelled to have these fragments with me as I continued up the hill to the chapel. The floor was cool, and behind the altar was a wall of alabaster with a carved cross. With the evening sun pouring through a yellow glass window, the whole space was floating in saffron light. I tried to empty my head and let go of the graveyard I was standing in, to let go of myself. Let the breath go in, go out. On the plane back to the United States, I kept waking and sleeping. It wasn’t until we were over Labrador that I realized I was carrying organic matter from another country. The declaration card asked: Are you bringing with you fruits, plants, cell cultures, “soil, or have you visited a farm/ranch/pasture outside the United States” The bones, now in resealable bags, were caked with soil, and although they weren’t cell cultures, what were they now, 90 years later I reached down into my briefcase and felt them through the plastic, glancing around to see if a flight attendant might be looking. What could I say These are bones of my countrymen I had visited a pasture of bones in the Syrian desert This one might be from my grandmother’s first husband; this one from a farmer from Sivas. I filled out my declaration card. “Are you bringing with you … ” I put an X in the “No” column. As I stood in line at customs at Kennedy Airport, I remembered my State Department hosts telling me that, because of where I’d been, they might want to check my bags. But the customs agent looked at my passport, looked at me, then stamped the passport and said, “Welcome back.” by Lou Ann Matossian MINNEAPOLIS – Merhaba. So you’ve found a Web page in Turkish and want to know what it says. Maybe you’ve come across an archival document, a family letter, the back of an old photo, or today’s newspaper. Years ago, the elder generation might have been able to read it. Now you don’t know who can help, and your Turkish-English dictionary offers only bits and pieces of a scrambled mosaic. To sort out the word order, the inflections, the idioms of Turkish, you need a translator. Unfortunately, the free translation software online is almost worse than your dictionary. Instead of clarifying the picture, it serves you word salad. Thanks to Google, help is on the way. On February 1, the popular Internet search engine added Turkish and six additional languages to its online service, Google Translate. While not comparable in quality Google Translate now offers translations to and from Turkish. to a human translation, Google’s machine translation can provide a rough idea of a Turkish text in a fraction of the time you would take to look up every other word in the dictionary. And it’s free. In addition to deciphering Turkish texts or entire Web pages, English-speakers can now surf the Turkish-language Internet. Google translates English search terms into Turkish, finds the most relevant Web pages, and displays them in both languages. The process also works in reverse. Anything written in Google Translate’s 40 other languages can now be translated almost instantly into Turkish. Popular demand may have helped to spur the availability of Turkish translation, says the “unofficial blog” Google Operating System. Last September, when 11 languages were announced, many of the commenters requested Turkish, “so Google listened to the feedback.” Turkish has an estimated 63 million speakers. But popularity isn’t everything. Maltese, with its 400,000 speakers, was among the 6 new languages introduced with Turkish this month. Can Armenian be far behind connect: http://translate.google.com/
The Armenian Reporter | February 7, 2009 15 Armenia From Armenia, in brief Richard Giragosian appointed director of ACNIS “Richard Giragosian represents the very ideals of objective scholarship that ACNIS has long held dear, and his personal contribution to the development of Armenia only matches the Center’s goals for a more democratic Armenia,” Armenian Center for National and International Studies (ACNIS) founder Raffi K. Hovannisian said, announcing Mr. Giragosian’s appointment as the center’s director. ACNIS conducts a wide range of strategic research and analysis covering the significant public policy issues in Armenia. ACNIS strategic research and analysis covers five main program areas: public policy, economics, international and regional studies, national security studies, and global and regional trends. For nine years, Mr. Giragosian served as a professional staff member of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress. He is a regular contributor to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) publications and is a contributing analyst for the London-based Jane’s Information Group, covering political, economic, and security issues in the South Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, Mr. Giragosian was appointed twice as a State Commissioner on the Virginia Governor’s Commission on Armenian Affairs and has also served as an honorary member of the National Steering Committees of both the Clinton Armenian soldiers. Photos: Photolure. and Gore presidential campaigns. Cease-fire violations continues along Karabakh Line of Contact On the night of January 30–31, Karabakh’s Armed Forces registered a number of cease-fire violations by the Azerbaijani army. According to Armenpress, the press service of the NKR Defense Ministry said that Azerbaijani soldiers had opened irregular fire in the direction of Armenian positions in Horadiz, Karakhambel, Korapatkino, Bashkarvet, and Jraberd, utilizing weapons of different calibers. Armenian regiments were able to determine the firing point of Azerbaijani positions and suppressed the fire without any losses. According to the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Ministry, the armed forces have the situation entirely under control on the front line and are Richard Giragosian. ready to suppress any aggressive steps undertaken by the rival. However on the evening of February 1 and during the day on February 2, Azerbaijan once again violated the cease-fire at a number of sections of the contact line between NKR and Azerbaijan. According to Mediamax, Azerbaijani soldiers fired at positions using small arms to the south in Horadiz, east to Korapatkino, northeast to Talish, and in the north Gyulistan directions. Following an adequate response from Armenia’s armed forces, the enemy stopped fire. There were no human losses. Investments in construction hit $2.8 billion in 2008 According to Armenia’s National Statistical Service (NSS), investments in construction in Armenia in 2008 grew by 1.7 percent to $2.8 billion. The greatest volume of investments was recorded in the third quarter of the year, 44.2 percent or $1.2 billion, dropping in the fourth quarter to 36.2 percent. 985 buildings with a total of 515,152 square meters of living space were put in commission in Armenia in 2008, exceeding the 2007 indicator by 9.8 percent. 84 buildings with a total of 22,800 square meters were constructed through state budget funds, 10 buildings with a total living area of 120,517 square meters by organizations and 891 buildings with a total of 371,835 square meters by private companies. Car imports grew by 18.5 percent in 2008 According to Arminfo, 41,104 cars were imported into Armenia despite declining demand for cars globally. According to the State Income Committee, the import of Russian cars also grew by 13.9 percent to 7,831 while the import of older cars declined. In Armenia, the older the car, the higher the tax. The import of cars worth less than $5,000 dropped by 27.3 percent to 13,830. Cars valued at $5,000– $10,000 grew by 40.6 percent to 16,191; cars worth $10,000–$15,000 grew by 57 percent to 5,586. School of cheese making in Tashir to go regional With the support of the Center of Agrobusiness and Rural Development (CARD) and the Armenian State Agrarian University, the Daughter Melania Cheese Factory is now being used as a school for cheese makers. Professors from the university and experienced cheese making specialists are teaching there. According to Armenpress, the school, which employees from different cheese factories have attended, has presented certificates of qualification to more than 100 graduates. The graduates now Armenia’s deputy police chief murdered YEREVAN – At approximately 8:30 P.M. on February 3, Police Colonel Gevorg Mherian, 33, a deputy chief of Armenia’s police force, was shot dead in front of his apartment on the seventh floor of an apartment building in Yerevan. An unknown assailant fled the scene of the crime after shooting several rounds from his gun: three of the bullets hit Col. Mherian in the head and one in the chest. By the time emergency services arrived, Col. Mherian was already dead. Investigators found eight shell casings from 9 mm gage bullets. The prosecutor general of Armenia, Aghvan Hovsepian, police chief Alik Sarkisian, and the head of the National Security Service of Armenia, Gorik Hakobyan, immediately arrived at the scene of the crime. A criminal investigation has been launched and will be conducted by the Special Investigations Service. Mr. Sarkisian told Mediamax that the shooting of the young work in cheese factories and family farms. Naira Mkrtchian, head of the marketing department of the center, said that Lori, Chanakh, Gouda, Dutch, Edem, Swiss, and Mozzarella cheeses produced by the Tashir cheese factory are successfully being exported to Russia and the United States. Based on the success of the Tashir cheese making school, CARD has made an additional investment for establishing schools in this field. The school, which has helped restore some of the best traditions of Armenian cheese production is planned to be made into a regional institution where people from Georgia can also participate in courses. Armenia Fund director visits Iran According to Arminfo, the executive director of the Armenia Fund Ara Vardanyan was in the Islamic Republic of Iran for a two-day working visit to discuss possibilities of establishing a fund affiliate there. The trip was organized with the support of the Armenian Embassy in Iran, as well as chairperson of the Armenian Council of Tehran Aida Avanesyan. 41,104 cars were imported into Armenia in 2008. colonel is a “serious shock to our structure.” Similarly on February 5, President Serge Sargsian called a consultation with all those connected with the investigation of the murder. He said, “The bullet of the criminal was directed not only toward one person, official but toward a whole system – police, the whole law enforcement system. The recent activity of Gevorg Mherian was directed toward the fight for the elimination of corruption mechanisms, and we must realize that. We must realize that and give a corresponding response. Our activities must stem from this circumstance.” Gevorg Mheryan was appointed deputy chief of police in July 2008. Previous to that he was a legal advisor to the president of Armenia, from March 2006. He is survived by his two daughters and his wife, who is pregnant with their third child. f Ara Vardanyan. The Armenia Fund believes that establishing a local affiliate in Iran will make the already established rapport between the fund and the Armenian community in Iran even more efficient. Thanks to Iranian-Armenian sponsorship a number of projects were implemented in the villages of Shvanizor, Alvank and Nrnadzor in the region of Meghri. f Gevorg Mherian. Photo: Photolure.
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