Friday March 7th, 2031
TRIP TO CANADA A REMINDER OF THE BAD OLD DAYS OF LIBYA
By Ahmad Al-Shaheen
Harpawa, Canada - It was an audience decades in the making.
For years, I attempted to secure an interview with the world's longest reigning strongman, and for years I failed. But finally, on a frigid day in February of this year, 2031, I received the momentous word. Canada's Leader-For-Life, Stephen Harper, would deign to speak to me in the ornate, gothic halls of Harper Palace, once known as the Parliament Buildings.
As I approached Harper Hill, I could not believe my good fortune. Yes, even as my breath froze into tiny ice crystals and fell to the ground with a little tinkling sound in front of me, I felt a great warmth inside. Praise Allah, I whispered to myself as I approached the great luminous beacon of the Leader-For-Life's head at the top of what Canadians used to refer to as the Peace Tower. After all, wasn't I about to speak with the man who turned Canada from a respected - if oft-ignored - western democracy into the most autocratic dictatorship on earth?!
The former prime minister's welcoming smile at the top of the Steve Tower certainly was at variance with his fearsome reputation. Indeed, even before his megalomania started to surface back in 2011, the year he decreed that the Canadian government should thenceforth be known as the Harper Government, he was noted for his angry, bullying nature. It is a reputation that harkens back to the dark days in our own country when Gadhafi reigned supreme. You remember those times, of course ... before Libya put aside its barbaric ways, underwent a revolution and became a paragon of representative democracy.
But the Harper who finally received me in his Throne Room, seemed as happy as the big fat head on the tower above us. His smile positively glowed - even through the obvious plastic surgery, the botox and meticulously dyed and coiffed hair. "Hello and welcome to Harpawa," he boomed. "Meet my cat. His name is Little Stephen Harper. I'm grooming him as my successor. After all, at my age you can't leave these things to chance."
"So, when you finally go, you're entrusting the great country of Canada to a cat?" I asked as he proffered the little animal for me to pet. I had a hard time hiding my incredulity. Sadly, it is a fault of mine and very dangerous around dictators. But thankfully, Harper didn't seem to notice.
"My children are all dead," he said chuckling. "Don't you remember I had to execute them all for treason? And then my wife left me for another woman, so I had to have her killed, too. Little Stevie here is the only Harper left I can trust. He'll be the standard-bearer for the future."
Yes, I had almost forgotten the atrocity stories. The long forced march of half the country's population into the far north. That was a policy designed to assert the country's sovereignty over what is now called "the Canadian Harptic." So many died on that march. So many Liberal and NDP voters who were denied the mukluks and parkas that surely would have sustained them, froze to death in the cold of Nunavut.
Then there was the dismantling of medicare and the welfare state, the reinstatement of capital punishment for all who opposed corporate tax cuts and money for hockey arenas in Quebec City. And let us not forget the teaching in the schools of creationism - that pernicious doctrine that posits that dinosaurs walked the earth at exactly the same time as Stockwell Day.
"Leader-For-Life Harper," I asked, "You have instituted so many draconian policies. Why have the people never risen up against you?"
"The Canadian people rise up against me? You've gotta be kidding. The only way my beloved fellow Canadians would ever do that is if I abolished beer, hockey and weekends," he said.
Just as I was turning to leave, he shouted after me, "By the way, speaking of hockey, I'm thinking of changing the name of our national sport. I thought of 'harpy' but that's got a lot of negative connotations. What about 'stevey? Y'know, like Stevey Night In Canada.?' Jeez, why didn't I think of that before??"
As I walked back into the cutting wind of the Harpawa winter, I turned to a very frightened looking Harper aide. "Did this all start back when he finally won his majority," I asked.
"Majority?," he said quizzically. "The Leader-For-Life never won a majority. He still hasn't got one."
It was then, my esteemed readers, that I despaired for the future of Canada. Praise be to Allah that Libya was saved from a similar fate.
The idea has alternative. A little mystery novel!!
Posted by: Nike Shox | May 18, 2011 at 04:07 AM