Comments on: Red Dog Howls Revisits Armenian Genocide, Leaves Questions

By: dakem

dakem — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 00:14:00 +0000

…actually the reference to a ‘black dog’ in Balakian’s book is made clear by the author in the novel. The black dog refers to a parable told to the
author by his grandmother. In this story two sacrificial offerings are made to
the goddess Fate: one is a succulent spring lamb, its body stuffed with
pomegranates and almonds and its eyes set with rubies; the other is a dead
black dog, its mouth stuffed with a wormy apple. Fate rejects the lamb and
accepts the dog. “Appearances are deceiving,” Nafina explains to a puzzled
young Peter. “The world is not what you think.”

He also refers to the dog in his book “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story”:

“The common term applied by the Turk to the Christian is ‘dog,’ and in his [the Turk’s] estimation this is no mere rhetorical figure; he actually looks upon his European neighbors as far less worthy of consideration than his own domestic animals…”

By: Janet

Janet — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 21:15:23 +0000

Armen, thank you for your comment! Fascinating stuff! Who knows if it’s the real reason, but it certainly fits well.

By: Armen

Armen — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 19:02:13 +0000

Regarding the image of dogs: I myself don’t have a real answer to this but perhaps something can be said about their relation to the Young Turks and the latter’s methods of dealing with troublesome matters.

When they rose to power in 1908, Istanbul faced a rampant dog problem. The Young Turks decided to solve this irritating problem in one fell swoop: they collected all the stray dogs and shipped them on barges in their tens of thousands to one of the Prince islands in the Marmara, where they devoured one another but eventually starved to death. The problem was taken care of.