Sharjah Festooned With Felicitation

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"How you doing today, Brian?"
"Oh, you know mate. Same old, same old. Festooned with felicitation as usual."

His Highness Dr Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi is the ruler of Sharjah. He returned recently from France where he underwent a 'minor surgery'. As Gulf News reports today (although I can't find the piece online), the resulting outbreak of felicitations is nothing less than extraordinary. Free-standing posters of Dr. Sultan have started popping up everywhere in the emirate over the past week.

I had at first thought it was purely a municipality thing, but families, businesses and generally everyone has been getting into the 'put up a poster' act, so the roundabouts are now becoming literally festooned with pictures of His Highness, while more are popping up on any piece of spare ground people can find. They appear to be increasing in number daily, too.

This year will mark Dr. Sultan's fortieth year as Ruler of Sharjah. I get the feeling there may be something of a party in store for us all...