Our Shepard: Faris

Faris is a special man. He is our Shepard, well technically speaking he is our medic, but I feel Shepard better suits him. At first I didn’t know if his actions where truly in tune with his personality, maybe it was for entertainment value or possibly an expression of his faith, but it appears from my tour guide Nicola’s reaction he goes leaps and bounds above his call of duty. Faris evokes images of a crime fighter in the distance or the lone warrior that hovers above you in the shadows. The only reason you take comfort is he is on your side. When I told Faris my whole Shepard theory, he smiled, patted me on the head, then proceeded to point at something very far away in the distance and took off like a bat out of hell. I was initially excited that Faris was in our group because he was Druze, a small minority in Israel, about 1% of the population and while the Druze are not regarded as Muslims by other Muslims, they regard themselves as Muslims as well as carriers of the core of this Islam. He maintained a traditional appearance, baldhead cloaked in a blue baseball cap and a long furry mustache. Our bus driver also happened to follow the Bahai faith, another interesting and quite modern religion that has its headquarters in Haifa, Israel. We lucked out in the cultural diversity area, what a role reversal.

Anyway, we quickly became aware of Faris’ apparent antics, love of the outdoors and scaling of the tallest mountains. Farris didn’t hike, he climbed. “Come, climb, climb it, lets go climb,” it was almost like a call to prayer. During one of our desert hikes, I noticed that he descended a pretty steep rock formation he was scouting out to pursue an unusual object he saw on the ground, a coke bottle. I was impressed. A man who loves nature has come to collect a piece of trash to keep the park clean. Nice. This made perfect sense to me. That’s why I was utterly stunned when Farris proceeded to unscrew the cap off the bottle, dump out some sand that was in it, carefully screw the cap back on, throw it on the ground with all of his soul and all of his might, let out a belching Ho, and then project himself forward using Aaron’s shoulder as a lever. I was in awe of what just happened. I needed an explanation. Just like analyzing a dream, Noam translated the following events. Because of Noam’s ability to understand the Hebrew language, he developed a strong kinship and understanding of Faris. “He did what he had to do Dave, he returned the soil to the earth.” Wow. That’s exactly what he did. To him, earth is a spiritual thing, something that shouldn’t been locked up or kept in a cage. It was the purest form of self-expression. The antics continued. Faris also loved grabbing peoples’ water bottles and drinking to his hearts content. He was a big believer in water. The funniest water incident occurred on a random pee stop on the road. We were at a rest stop and Faris was standing guard outside the bathroom. Suddenly without a blink of an eye he grabs someone’s water, chugs half the bottle and looks me in the eye and states, “now I have a reason to pee.” I guess he needed to pee.


Israel is home to many stray cats, especially old city Jerusalem. Feris had fun with these. One day we took a walking tour around some really isolated conservative communities. By isolated I mean most of the homes don’t have TVs, possibly not even radios and the little news most people get about the outside world comes from a trip to the local market, a newspaper left on the street or a weekly bus ride down town. Most of Israel is not like this, but you can still find communities like this. So anyway, here we come loud, boisterous, pop culture Americans. We tried to be as respectful as possible. Apparently Faris didn’t get the memo. A couple of the girls found this really cute cat that was eyeing our tour group and decided to go over and play with it. Evidently, Faris noticed this and wanted to play with the cat too. So he picks it up by the scruff on the back of its neck, holds it as high as he can and tosses it down the street, a good two yards possibly more. The thing screams and takes off like a racehorse. A couple minutes later the same thing, this time he grabbed Aaron’s cat. The girls pleaded with him to put it down, but before Faris had a say the cat twisted it’s way free and escaped the toss. If that wasn’t enough, Faris then moved his target to the children. No he didn’t toss the children, but he ran up and down the stairs scaring them into little groups and piles. I told you the man was a Shepard.

Being Druze, Faris did not imbibe alcohol or smoke of any kind. He took special care to make sure that the substances he touched were pure. When I offered him one of my special tea tree oil toothpicks, he was hesitant to take one. He looked at the package with bewilderment, “from tree?” he asked. When I assured him that yes, it was from a tree he took one and enjoyed it. Although most people relished in his erratic behavior, Faris did turn belligerent at times. I don’t think he had much patience for people he saw as morally offensive. One of the coolest things we did on the trip was sleep out in the Negev Desert in a traditional Bedouin tent made from camel hair. With nowhere to go and not much to see,a bunch of us started playing hacky sack, which instantly caught Faris’ attention. “Soccer, this is soccer?” We were too tired to explain. “Yeah, it’s like soccer.” He tried to join in the game, but failing to grasp the concept of the game, that you are suppose to control the ball and pass it gently to the other players, Faris intervened. He stole our ball, over and over and over again. If that wasn’t enough he then threw it a people, well not just anyone, mostly couples or better put pairs of girls and guys that decided they didn’t wanna sleep solo and therefore were happily snuggled up next to one another in the tent. I think this is morally offensive in Druze culture. He also targeted Aaron aka Scorpion King slash Gangster Moses and some of the other big smokers and drinkers in our group. They were not happy about this, but what were they going to do. I got pretty good at keeping the hacky sacky away from Faris, but then he just chased me and it developed into a completely different game in its own right, part football, part wrestling, part king of the mountain. Surprisingly, I wasn’t scared. I could tell he was holding back and I think he was either A) frightened by the fact that he might hurt me or B) in awe that I would dare test his strength. Either way I survived to tell the tale.

The next day at Ben-Gurion’s grave we quickly became aware that we weren’t Faris’ only fans. A school group of largely Ethiopian girls began screaming when they saw him. I’ve never seen Faris embarrassed. It was humbling to watch. He didn’t know how to react. He greeted them kindly, but the closer he got, the more they screamed and the shier he became. I’d like to think that one day Faris and I will cross paths again and that I will evoke that same reaction. I’ll miss you Faris. You taught me more then you will ever know.