Ani's Story by B.J. Bleakney

When you first encounter Dr. Anoush Ghukasyan, Duchess of Sassoun; PhD, you are equally struck by her dark features as you are her unassuming elegance and quiet confidence. Before you have even glimpsed her fantastical personal story, you can sense she is a particular type of woman – one who has dedicated her life to cultivating intelligence and a character of unshakeable strength. If you are willing to listen to her journey, you will quickly gain a sense for what she has been through and where she came from – though you may struggle to believe it.

Any keen listener will be awed by her heritage, which includes descending from David of Sassoun, a hyperbolic figure who was deemed, “the guardian of the Armenian race" in an epic dedicated to his feats. Unfortunately, what could otherwise set the stage for a perfect Hollywood romance– including accounts of slain dragons and royal birthright – is darkened by the perpetual persecution faced by her ancestors and Ani herself.

Dr. Ghukasyan, who is affectionately known as ‘Ani’, is a real-life Duchess. This title was bestowed upon this esteemed professor of linguistics by her paternal grandmother, from her great-grandfather—Duke Sharo, knight, leader (a fierce warrior who was assassinated by a trusted Kurdish servant) and on to Ani’s grandmother, (a highly-respected survivor of the Armenian Genocide), the grand-daughter of Sharo, Duke of Sassoun. Rather than the regal occasions and luxurious lifestyle one may typically associate with belonging to a noble dynasty, Ani’s familial history is one that tells of the heroism of a minority peoples’ struggle to survive when faced with a deliberate attempt to annihilate the whole of a nation.

What protected Ani’s grandmother during times of social and political struggle are the traits that define her family traditions: integrity, hospitality, intelligence and bravery. A particular instance demonstrates how integral these characteristics have been to her esteemed family: As the Armenians were being purged from their homeland during the Genocide that intensified beginning in 1915, Ani’s grandmother (a young girl at the time) was supposed to be assassinated. However, another Kurdish servant assigned to this bloody task demurred to her exceptional generosity– even towards those invading her community. He returned the kindness demonstrated by this remarkable character with an urgent warning, buying her time to escape. The Duchess of Sassoon was permitted to live and made it to Eastern Armenia, to the village of Ashnak (now the center of the people of Sassoun [Sassuntsis]), which gave her the chance to train her granddaughter in the fashion due her noble heritage (though, not openly, as it was in then-Soviet Russia). Ani’s grandmother demonstrated and encouraged the best of noblesse, and she was quietly and lovingly taught to cultivate her mind and spirit to develop into a globally-minded citizen and warm-hearted woman in the finest Armenian traditions.

• When she reached adulthood, Ani married a gifted Armenian surgeon and gave birth to twin boys. Tragically, her husband met an early end due to the indiscriminate will of an aggressive blood cancer. Widowed with two young sons, Ani was severely shaken but determined to go on: she presented and defended her PhD thesis, which centered on Professor Noam Chomsky’s linguistic concept of Generative Transformational Theory. Ani’s contribution was to implement Chomsky’s theory into practice in language teaching methodology.

It worked! It’s now the focus of her new research into English language teaching and its effect on global migration. Her system, called PACER (Professor Ani’s Cornerstone of English Remediation) provides the standard for ALL language teaching, especially English.

After a long and lonely struggle, the fates (and Facebook’s “Are You Interested”) smiled upon Ani. She met her now-husband, Brian, who is a retired, disabled Canadian Veteran and ex-pilot. “I raised my children on my own for 10 years and I had basically closed that personal chapter of my life; I thought I would never marry again. But, my world changed when I miraculously met Brian,” Ani recalls; “Ours is an impossible love story of two people who found each other while living half a world apart; I’ve discovered the miracle of a greater romance after a great deal of suffering and loneliness.”

Brian, who has also overcome his fair share of adversity – surviving a 100-foot fall that broke both his kneecaps and nearly rendered him permanently disabled – was instantly charmed by Ani’s quick mind and beauty. He was delighted at the opportunity to become a family with her and her boys, and didn’t hesitate to join them in Armenia. The couple became legally married in Armenia and began to make plans to establish their lives in Brian’s home in British Columbia. Faced with a daunting 18-month wait and a grueling application process (with Canada’s clunky and confusing immigration website) to get Ani’s admission to Canada, the Armenian Duchess decided to apply from California, where she could visit relatives and tour the United States along its’ beautiful West Coast. Ani successfully applied at the American Embassy in Armenia and her little family was granted admittance to the United States.

Through the B1/B2 visa for her and her sons they were admitted to the States for a period of six months. During this time, she submitted three separate visa applications to Canadian Immigration, but was denied each time “for the most ridiculous reasons”, and at considerable expense. Simultaneously, the family submitted their Permanent Resident application package to Canada through the Spousal Sponsorship program. Because this process took so much longer than originally anticipated (30 months instead of the 18 month target) Ani had to apply to USCIS to extend her visit and got approval to stay for 6 months. After that, she applied again, but was denied permission to remain in the US for an additional six months. However, Ani filed a Motion to Appeal and waited for USCIS to respond; until then, she would wait in Los Angeles. No answer to her appeal ever came.

Three months after arriving in the US, Ani, Brian and the boys were staying at a motel in Bellingham, Washington and, having misunderstood the visitor visa to be expiring, Brian crossed the border into British Columbia to get his truck from home so that they could pack their belongings and appeal to Canada Customs for entry into Canada (another long, confusing story).

The next day, Brian and his son from a previous marriage, returned to the border. Brian was not permitted to cross, so his son travelled to Ani to pick up his father’s medication and provide Ani with the details of her husband’s detainment. To better understand why Brian was being wrongfully accused, Ani went to the border where, like her husband, she was demonized as an unwelcome alien.

She exited the car as it got in line to cross the Canadian border, and started walking across the roadway to get to the American border station, when all of a sudden four American border officers rushed towards her shouting, “Ma’am, stop! Were you trying to get across to the Canadian side? “. Ani was scared and confused, as she was far from the Canadian side of the border. She said that she was walking to the American border office to see her husband.

Once inside the US border station, a border officer refused to let Ani see Brian; instead, he grilled her; “Why are you still here? YOU said in your application you would only be here 2 months! “, and then he repeated, in a loud and threatening voice, “WHY are you STILL Here?” Ani tried to explain: “My visa is good for 6 months and I am legally in the US and I will leave when the visa expires”, at which point the officer raised his hand, cutting her off.

Then, she was told, “You will NOT see your husband! NO, you can NOT talk to him! You will go back and be on your own”, in a nasty, explosive tone that was very intimidating and demeaning. She was photographed and fingerprinted before being sent on her way.

Ani was told to leave. She left on foot and had no access to any means of transportation. Terrified and desperate to return to her children, Ani sought out a bus station. Very quickly, she became aware she was not alone. She was being followed by border security in a large van.

The guards stopped her in her tracks. They demanded her ID (as if unaware of the confrontation in the station) and was repeatedly asked what she was doing in the city and why she was “walking around aimlessly in a place you don’t belong”. Scared, intimidated (and thinking she was well on her way to imprisonment at Guantanamo detention center she’d heard about), but fiercely unwilling to allow anything to prevent her from returning to her sons, Ani responded, “All I want is to get back to my kids in Bellingham as quickly as possible”.

She shares, “They were kind enough to call me a taxi, but only after making several insinuations that I could not possibly have any money to pay for transportation.” This is one of several instances where Ani explains she felt humiliated; she felt that she was treated like a second-class person, and was made to feel condemned for her foreignness and lack of belonging in their city.

From that day forward, it was rare for Brian to travel without incident. He was frequently denied entry to the States (and missed his flight and the money spent) and the border between his wife and sons soon began to seem more like an insurmountable barrier, rather than a mechanism designed to protect law-abiding citizens.

After a prolonged waiting period,(one year longer than Canada’s processing target), and further exasperated by constant uncertainty and a perpetual sense of "non-belonging", Ani and her sons were granted permanent residence by the Canadian government. Flooded with relief, the family believed they were going to finally be able to leave behind the terror and resistance that defined their stay in America; although Ani says, “Don’t get me wrong, we were grateful that the US hosted us during this period; we saw SO many wonderful places, and had the blessing of visiting family and colleagues. But our experiences with US border officers soured our hearts; and, after helping law enforcement in Bellingham and Los Angeles, it felt like SUCH a slap in the face!”

Unfortunately, Ani’s new status as a Canadian resident was not sufficient to provide relief from US border officers’ cruelty. In 2016, Ani and Brian attempted to return to Washington to visit the friends they had made there and retrieve Brian’s guitar, (which had been left behind when Ani and her boys relocated to Vancouver Island). It was at the Peace Arch border where Ani and Brian re-encountered a foreboding scene of what they truly believe to be “undeserved interrogation and harassment”.

During what should have been a routine visit to Bellingham, the border alarms began to sound and Ani was told to get out of the family car. She and Brian proceeded into the station as directed, expecting to answer a few questions before continuing on their way. Ani’s Canadian Permanent Resident card and passport were seized. After a prolonged wait, one of the officers called Ani to his booth and he began to articulate a bold and creative “narrative” that, to this day, Ani vehemently refutes. The officer informed her that she had been caught in a lie – one, if true, was told in her original interviews with the American Embassy before she ever even left Armenia. According to this border security guard, Ani had told the embassy clerk she had a spousal sponsorship visa in place, and this was the only reason they granted her entry into the United States.

Horrified by the insinuations of the officer; ones that painted her as a liar and a criminal, Ani protested that the officer at the US Embassy in Yerevan, Armenia was in possession of her passport for a full week, during which time he would have easily been able to see whether or not she had a visa. To be sure, such a visa would have been attached to her passport. (The Embassy officer would not have simply taken her word that such a document existed; he would have had to have the physical document in hand if he wanted to keep his job!) In spite of Ani’s protests, the officer insisted that her “lie” constituted “a federal assault, which is an indictable offense”. She recalls his nasty, threatening tone, “Now you are lying to me, which is another assault against a federal officer. Either you admit that you told the officer at the embassy you had a Canadian spousal sponsorship visa, or you are going back to where you came from and never coming into the States again.”

Ani was emotionally shaken, but her integrity was not: she refused to lie, just conform to the officer’s misrepresentation of her story. “I told him I would not speak another word and asked that he do what was right and allow me to return to Canada to be with my family.” The officer smugly did what he was legally inclined to. But, as Ani walked away from yet another confusing and humiliating scene, her skin crawled as another officer taunted, “You are not welcome in the United States!”

Brian was not allowed to support nor console his wife as, much to his dismay; they were kept separate throughout this dehumanizing process. Brian, a disabled Canadian military veteran and ex-peace officer who proudly believes in Canada’s (and America’s) fairness toward people from all walks of life, asked to be reunited with his wife. After a prolonged interrogation, they were finally permitted to return to Canada. Ani explains, “I was treated like a terrorist; I have never felt so helpless, as when I was forced to stand by silently as my rights and freedoms were taken away.”

Desperate to understand what she had done to attract this unwanted and undeserved animosity, Ani immediately contacted USCIS and US Homeland Security to file a complaint and to rectify any disputes. She asked for any record that might indicate why she had been barred from the States, but her inquiries were fruitless – there was no record of her being detained at the border and no papers that indicated if or why she is no longer welcome on American soil. To this day, she still has no answers from US authorities.

What does all this mean for Ani, a published scholar and talented educator? “I don’t have access to employment in the States, I cannot go to lecture there or even fly to Mexico for a simple vacation,” she explains. “The worst part is; I don’t even know what my status in the States is; I was only told I am no longer welcome, but, because it was only stated verbally, I have no idea what weight that holds – or for how long.”

Dr. Anoush Ghukasyan and her ancestors’ stories have all the makings of a modern fairy tale; from renowned Armenian noble and intellectual to happy Canadian resident (and pending citizen of her new country), there are many joyful recollections of her odyssey. But there’s a dark cloud over her as she continues journey; she is plagued by feelings of dread that haunt her; the false experience of the “American Dream” is more like Ani’s nightmare. All this wife and mother of two wants is answers and for the truth to be told. But, until her story can be authenticated and amplified, by the fundamental rights promised in the Freedom of Information Act, she remains dignified and focuses on rebuilding her life and regaining the sense of security that was taken from her.