Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir

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.