Harry's Place has a piece on the wearing of the keffiyeh by westerners. I have to confess, there are times I wear one and Harry asks why? Well there are two simple answers. First there is the pretension of looking cool and, even better, hoping that people will ask me where I got it. A reply of, "A little shop at the back of the Ramallah bus station", is a real piece of one-upmanship. The only problem is no-one has ever asked the question because they are freely available in the UK from your local hippy store.
So the other reason is that it is bloody warm in cold weather. At 54 looking cool is not quite as important, or even possible, whereas looking sad is positively easy. I was teaching on the West Bank in the summer of 1981 and brought two back with me. Twenty five years later I am still wearing the first one, it refuses to wear out. The second sits pristinely at the top of the wardrobe awaiting the first one's demise. I think that at this rate my own will come first.
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