Abstract
In Relative Good, David Gow grapples with the complex implications of the War on Terror, and the resulting sweeping changes to law that allow authorities to violate basic civil rights. Mohamed El Rafi is a Syrian-born Canadian engineer. He’s arrested in New York’s JFK airport, held without explanation, interrogated, and eventually forced to sign papers that facilitate his deportation to Syria. As Canadian government involvement only worsens El Rafi’s predicament, his lawyer and wife team up in an attempt to gain his freedom in a world where, as one character says, “Sometimes the price of freedom is freedom itself.” This incisive drama lays bare the absurdity of official policy, and the human cost of racial profiling.