Ajman Traffic Lights, the Fungi of Yoreth, & etc.

After disappearing for a month, Farook finally answered my request to meet, so I took the Metro and met him. He then tried to drive me directly to Ajman.

Sadly, Farook is getting older (as are we all), and he often forgets where he is and where he's going, but eventually we made it to Ajman, and I commented that I really like the Ajman traffic signals, which tell you exactly how many seconds you have left. Red seconds are how long you have left to wait, green seconds are how long you have left to go.

Farrook's response was, 'I no like. In Dubai, you come to light, you relax. Maybe it change, maybe it no change, no worry. But in Ajman, you see seconds and you must worry.'

So we took Farouk's son to buy a shirt with his football hero on it, then dropped his son off, then went to a clinic, where the ENT said Farook has mushrooms in his ear.

Actually, in English, mushrooms and fungi are two different words, but in Arabic, they are the same word: i.e., in Arabic, the word for a fungal infection is the same as the word for mushrooms.

About two years ago, Farook took me with him to see a Dubai doctor who cleaned out his ear and said...

Actually, what he said was in Arabic, so I'm not sure what the doctor really said, but Farook said the doctor said the problem was fixed.

It wasn't.

The Ajman doctor cleaned out Farook's ears, showed us the same black gunk I saw two years ago, and said it was a fungal infection, and needed treatment, or it would keep coming back.

Farook told me he'd gotten the same answer the week before, plus some drops he was to put in his ears every night, drops he had not used.

So Farook's fungal infection shows no sign of abating after two years.

And my own ears are starting to itch.