Arabic m (م)

25 Nov 2008 | 135 words | amsterdam food popular culture

So the dutch have this tradition of giving each other big chocolate letters with their initials for for sinterklaas. both the celebration of sinterklaas and these chocolate letters are fairly important elements of dutch national identity. as i have mentioned here before last years el hema exhibition by mediamatic did a fairly good job at undermining/reinforcing that whole concept. one little part of that (the one willem was most proud of) were a couple of hand-made (and thus not for sale) arabic script chocolate letters.

Now – a little bit more than a year later – it seems that a commercial manufacturer has taken up the hint:

Arabic letter m (م) chocolate letter on sale at Marqt on Overtoom in Amsterdam

Makes me wonder if they ever realized that they put the م upside down…