A Muslim Woman Worth Her Salt

So I never really envisioned this being a topic worth mentioning on MMW.  However, for reasons that will become clear in a minute (or already, for most of you, given the photo attached to this post), it has become unexpectedly relevant to tell you that my family has an impressively (or embarrassingly, depending on who you ask) large collection of salt and pepper shakers – the more ridiculous and tacky, the better.  It started a long time ago with salt and pepper shakers shaped like very ugly turkeys.  Over the years, the collection has grown, and even more so as friends have seen the existing collection, and then have added their own finds.  We’ve got salt and pepper shakers shaped like alligators, police cars, Minnie Mouse’s bow and shoe, ants, kangaroos, a Coke machine, various types of birds, outhouses, frogs, lobsters, and oh so many more.

So it is perhaps fitting that when my lovely friend Tabassum was flying through Dubai recently, she thought of us when she saw these:

And, well, yeah, they’re so ridiculous that I’m not sure I actually have anything to say about them, so I apologise for the lack of actual content here, but just thought they deserved an appearance on MMW for being so weird.  Some questions that come to mind:

• What’s with their arms?  Are they praying?  If so, would that make them more bizarre, or less?
• Who buys them?  Do people actually use them?  Is there anyone, ever, who has purchased these as a serious souvenir?
• If the man is dressed in white and the woman in black, why is he pepper while she is salt?
• Who ever decided that it would be a good idea to make these?  Do people get paid money to design stuff like this???
• Could I have possibly come up with a cheesier headline for this post?

And so on.  If any of you have suggested captions or additional philosophical questions provoked by these salt and pepper shakers, I’m all ears…