Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir

The third section of the book, “Father,” opens with a short chapter about Balakian’s earliest “recognition of [his] father as a public person” (75) at a Columbia University football game in 1958.

Attending these games was another family tradition, especially for Peter’s father, Gerard Balakian, who enjoyed “always sitting in the same seat, always buying a program at the same entrance gate, always buying a Coke and two hot dogs wrapped in aluminum foil” for each family attendee (74). Football seems to be as important to Gerard as baseball was to Nafina. At the homecoming game in the 1958 season, a man collapses close to the Peter and his father. Gerard rushes over, gives the man mouth-to-mouth and CPR, sees him into an ambulance, and then collects Peter and resumes his normal, enthusiastic gameday routine.

The episode disturbs Peter. He obsesses over whether the man had died, and even though his father says the man will be okay, he is also very withholding about details. As his father focuses on the game and the author tries to question him, his father seems impatient with the questions and disinclined to engage in conversation, similar to the withholding and dismissive demeanor displayed by other family members when the author asks about Armenia.