As Abousfian Abdelrazik awoke one morning in the Canadian embassy in Khartoum, he found himself transformed into a rodent in a maze …

No, it isn’t Gregor Samsa waking up in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, who starts to become a giant insect. When we first learned of Abousfian Abdelrazik’s plight more than a year ago, he had been marooned in Sudan for five years and was then “holed up,” stories said, in our embassy; he couldn’t go home to Canada because “we” thought he might be al-Qaeda. So we lodge him in the embassy? Where, in a closet? Where did they put him during the day — in the basement? Did he roam around at night when no one was there? We didn’t hear from him directly, except for rare quotes, and never saw him. He began to sound, at least to me, like a feral animal.

The bizarre case, which was uncloaked by The Globe’s Paul Koring, has often been called Kafkaesque. Like Josef K. in The Trial, Abousfian Abdelrazik was never given reasons for his arrest in Sudan. Once free, he was told he had to pay his airfare home but, because he was on a UN terror watch list, any money he received would be seized, and it was illegal to give him money. Our government wouldn’t help him get off the watch list because, they said, “he’s an individual associated with al-Qaeda.” But he’s associated with al-Qaeda because he’s on the UN watch list. The RCMP told the prime minister there was no evidence against him and CSIS agreed, but CSIS continued calling him an “Islamic jihad activist.”

I find the term “Kafkaesque” often overused, like surreal. (I once dreamed I was at a literary party, eavesdropping, and all I heard guests say was Kafkakafkakafkakafka. That is, I grant, Kafkaesque.) But it seems to fit here, though more in the sense of Gregor Samsa than Josef K.

There’s nothing too Kafkaesque about his arrest and torture in Sudan, when he went there in 2003 to visit his ailing mother. It fits the familiar pattern of rendition. It’s that subsequent incarceration-cum-sanctuary in the embassy that looks weird and inexplicable, when he seemed to start going feral. But since his return to Canada, there’s been a reverse process, anti-Kafkaesque, by which he transformed back to human, and it is as startling as the earlier change. How did it happen?

We finally got to see him. The murky figure lurking in a jail cell or a closet has a face. It’s pleasant, it smiles. He has kids, who I must have read about but they didn’t register, in that way the mind works, till I saw them. He speaks English — who knew? He says Canadian-sounding things like, “I want those people who played a role in this matter to face justice, not because I seek revenge, [but] because I want this not to happen to any Canadian citizen any more.” Reporter Andrew Chung said he looked “as if he were heading to a backyard barbecue rather than into a fight over fundamental rights with the federal government.” The process of (re)humanization can be remarkably simple. Gregor Samsa — too bad you never made it to Montreal.

Due to this reversal, I think we also have an explanation — a very unKafkaesque thing — for why the embassy sheltered him: They didn’t want him seen and humanized. It would undercut their plan to prevent his return (for no stated reasons — which is still Kafkaesque). A Canadian diplomat in 2005 said as much: “Should this case break wide open in the media, we may have a lot of explaining to do.” Especially if people got to see him, and began to sympathize or identify. Better to coop him up where they could control access. It’s as if Gregor Samsa finally found out why he became an insect.

Humanization doesn’t always entail sympathy. Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei looked petty and biased when he descended from his aerie last month to denounce the protests. But it does leave you knowing more than you did.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.