Eric
Fares
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
chieftain of the last Bedouin tribe of the desert empire.
The young Egyptian spent but four years in their company and was last
seen by his brothers and sisters' horrified brown eyes tumbling head
over camel-hoof from a treacherous mountain pass.
He was discovered face-down in the sandy foothills by a mysterious
order of monks, fortunately, it seemed he had escaped with only a few
scrapes, two bumps on the melon, a broken toe, and zero recollection of
his nomadic youth. The Monks nursed him back to health while he was
apprenticed in their mysterious ways. Most notably, he learned 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, stories abounded about the giant camel of Abdulrah Pass, and
how his flatulence could shake the very foundations of the mountains.
It was when Faraakesh reached the ripe old age of 10, confused by a
subconscious longing for many many wives, that he began voicing the
sacrilegious questions that saw him orphaned once again.
The little prince, banished from the old world, soon found himself on a
falukha pointed due west. Of course, the fishing boat never did reach
its port of destination. A year to the day of its departure from the
middle-east, flotsam and jetsam were spotted floating mysteriously
counter current up the great Canadian Saint Lawrence and onto the
frozen banks of Montréal island. A traumatized dark-pale boy
with wild eyes was sighted wandering off shivering into the small town
of Verdun, where he proceeded to melt 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 regulars away, shinny games
got smaller and smaller until only a couple of regulars, unperturbed by
the tunes, remained.
Sam and Cuddy regularly used the empty arena to hone their skills. It
was a pretty nice arrangement, they kinda dug the grooves and both of
them were really on top of their games. Well 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 went 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 bound together by pieces of
discarded hockey tape, in the center a large pyramid, comprised
entirely of broken hockey sticks, stood six feet tall. One of the faces
was open exposing 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 being 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 him looking at my
organ, well, what can I say, I spared his life, left the Arena, started
jamming with the guys and the rest is history."
