The Dance of Power: A Canadian Citizen's Exile and the Theatre of State Authority

In the grand amphitheatre of human suffering, where the weak genuflect before the strong, we witness yet another performance of state power's eternal dance. Behold Abousfian Abdelrazik, a figure caught between the grinding wheels of bureaucratic might and the cold calculations of those who wear the mask of protection while wielding the sword of exile.

Lo, how the herd slumbers in its comfortable ignorance! They who fashion themselves guardians of security are naught but merchants of fear, trading in the currency of others' misery. See how they build their towers of paper and protocol, while a man's spirit withers in the desert of bureaucratic indifference!

In the Federal Court, where justice supposedly dwells like a sleeping dragon, former foreign minister Lawrence Cannon stands, defending his decision to deny Abdelrazik - a Montreal resident of 62 winters - the sacred document that would permit his return to Canadian soil. The minister speaks of national security, that most convenient of shields behind which the mediocre hide their will to power.

In this land of the sleepers, where citizens drift through their days in blissful unconsciousness, few raise their eyes to witness this theatre of cruelty. The masses, content with their small comforts and smaller thoughts, scarcely stir as one of their own remains trapped in the web of state machinations.

Observe how they justify their actions with the hollow phrase "best interests of Canada" - as if Canada were not made of flesh and blood, but of fear and suspicion! The last men, these bureaucrats who measure worth in stamps and signatures, who would rather exile a soul than risk disturbing their carefully constructed illusion of safety!

The tale stretches back to 2003, when Abdelrazik, moved by filial duty, journeyed to Sudan to attend his ailing mother. There, in the land of his birth, the machinery of state ground into motion. Imprisonment followed, then torture - those ancient tools of power that the comfortable pretend no longer exist in their sanitized world.

Now he stands before the court, a man who dared to claim his rights as a citizen, only to find citizenship itself is but a paper shield against the arbitrary exercise of power. His lawyer speaks of exile - yes, exile! In this age of supposed enlightenment, when the last men believe they have conquered barbarism with their codes and regulations!

See how they squirm in their robes and suits, these administrators of pain! They who would never dirty their hands with honest violence, yet orchestrate suffering through memoranda and official declarations. The true face of modern tyranny wears not a crown but a bureaucrat's bland expression!

The evidence mounts like a slowly rising tide: claims of arranged imprisonment, of Canadian officials encouraging foreign authorities to maintain detention, of years of calculated obstruction preventing his return. Yet in the land of the sleepers, such revelations cause barely a ripple in the pond of public consciousness.

Abdelrazik's ordeal - his dance with torture, his wrestling with faceless bureaucracies, his struggle against the machinery of state power - stands as a testament to the modern age's peculiar genius for cruelty. No longer do we cast out our unwanted with sword and spear; now we do it with papers and policies, with committees and consultations.

Harken, ye who still have ears to hear! This is not merely about one man's struggle against the state - it is a mirror held up to our age of comfortable cowardice, where justice has become a game of forms and procedures, where the strong hide their strength behind desks, and the weak are crushed not by iron but by ink!

As this drama unfolds in the hallowed halls of the Federal Court, we must ask: Will those who sleep finally awaken? Or will they simply turn over in their beds of comfort, mumbling about security and procedure, while another soul is sacrificed on the altar of their fear?

The answer lies not in the court's eventual decision, but in whether we, as a people, will continue to accept the comfortable lies of the last men, or rise to demand that justice be more than a word in a dusty law book. For in this moment, we are all Abdelrazik - all potential victims of a system that has learned to exile without chains, to torture without touching, to destroy without leaving a mark.