Faiz.

Faiz lives in an apartment in Mutrah — the harbor district of Muscat, in Oman. Third floor, no elevator. The door has a latch that turns by hand, without a key. The neighbor on the second floor has told him several times: it's dangerous. Faiz smiles every time. If someone wants to get in, they'll get in. But he needs to be able to get out.

The burrows of the Arabian red fox have between two and four entrances. Faiz's apartment works the same way: large windows facing east, cross ventilation, a ledge in the bedroom that opens onto an alley and from which you can get down to the street if needed. The Nissan Urvan, always parked below, always ready. The idea of having a single way out produces something that isn't exactly fear but that comes close enough. Biologists call this anti-predator behavior — the need for multiple escape routes. In a wild fox, it's the difference between eating and being eaten. In Faiz, it's the difference between being able to leave and feeling trapped.

That same need applies to what he carries. If he has to go, he goes. With whatever he has. If you'd rather have a flat format with handles, Faiz is also available [as a tote bag](https://www.yagopartal.com/animal-kinhood/faiz/). A backpack is that — something you wear and that holds the minimum you need to function. Faiz doesn't plan an exit with three suitcases and a list. He walks out the door with what he has on his back and figures it out as he goes.

Gulf Cool offered him a full-time contract. Eight hundred rials a month. Health insurance. A new van. Seven-to-three hours. Faiz drove to Wadi Shab — a gorge with natural pools an hour and a half from Muscat — and walked three hours through the canyon to where the water falls between the rocks and you can dip your feet in. He came back at night. He said no.

The Gulf Cool manager asked why. "I need to be able to say no to a job." The manager didn't understand. Faiz isn't entirely sure he understands it himself. But every time the question comes back — and it does come back, because the rent goes up and summer jobs don't last all year — he remembers that Ibrahim had fixed hours and a van that wasn't his. And that one Tuesday he took that van and left without a note. What scares Faiz isn't precarity. It's the possibility of getting trapped in something you can only get out of by disappearing.

**Good as a gift?** If the person you're giving it to gets what it means to always have your things ready to go, yes. If they also like animals in human clothes and stories that don't run out in a sentence, even better. The portrait has the same resolution as on the posters — the difference is that here you carry it on your back, not on a wall.