It was the year 1975 that bore witness to the birth of one Erkhat Faarakhan-Mahesh Faraakesh. He was ejected onto a bed of pillows in a tent deep in the Sinai, son of a runaway Nubian princess and the chieftaan of the last Bedouin tribe of the desert empire spanning from the Red Sea to the Mountains of the Eastern Sun.
The young "Egyptian" spent but four years in the company of his family and was last seen by his brothers and sisters' horrified brown eyes tumbling head over camel-hoof from a treacherous mountain pass the tribe were crossing in search of zaatar bushes.
Discovered face-down in the sandy foothills by an unnamed order of monks with a few scrapes, two bumps on the ol' melon, zero recollection of his nomadic youth, and a broken toe, he was nursed back to health and apprenticed to the order's mysterious ways and, most notably, learnt to work the great reed organ deep in the secret caverns of the monastery. The little guy spent years haunting the desert with its dark rumbling sounds and stories abounded about the giant camel of Abdulrah Pass, and how his flatulence could shake the very foundations of the mountains.
It was when he reached the ripe age of 10, confused by a subconcious longing for many wives, that he began voicing the sacrilegeous questions that saw him orphaned once again. The little prince, banished from the old world, was soon on a falukha pointing west.
The one-sail keelless fishing boat never did reach its port of destination, but, a year to the day of its departure from the middle-east, flotsam and wreckage were reported to float mysteriously counter current up the great Canadian Saint Laurence and onto the frozen banks of Montreal island, where a traumatized dark-pale boy with wild eyes and amnesia wandered off shivering into the small town of Verdun melting into the shadows.
Over the years, Zamboni drivers at the local barn reported hearing haunting organ sounds emanating from the bowels of the arena. Despite a thorough top to bottom search, no evidence of a source was ever uncovered. Reluctantly, the locals accepted it as some sort of haunting, the work of some kind of phantom organ player. The music, being widely accepted as the work of the undead, did have the detrimental effect of keeping a lot of the disconcerted players away. Shinny games got smaller and smaller until only a couple of regulars, unperturbed by the tunes, remained.
Sam and Cuddy often used the empty arena to hone their skills. It was a pretty nice arrangement, they kinda dug the grooves and found the tunes helped them get into the zone. Both of them were really on top of their game when one night, Sammy fired a wild slap shot from the blue line right into the brick wall of the arena, knocking a sizeable hole in it. Pleased with the power of his shot, but fearing the wrath of the surly custodian, Blind Clint's miserable cousin Hawk Eye Lou, he climbed the stands to assess the damage. As he peered into the hole a bizarre scene came into focus. In the corner of a dark room was a crudely constructed organ comprised of broken hockey sticks bound together by pieces of discarded hockey tape. Clearing dust and bricks off the intsrument a groggy and startled Faraakesh.
As the pale Egyptian made to run for it he halted in his tracks when Sam said "Nice grooves man, how would you feel about playing in my band?" " I had no idea what he was saying," says Eric of the encounter, "I stopped 'cause I remembered I had a dagger in my belt, I was gonna slit his throat, but as I got a little closer and saw the 'heavy' behind him (Cuddy) well, what can I say, I spared his life, left the ol' barn, started jamming with the guys and the rest is history."
