Word: scarf
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...Israeli youngster wearing a yarmulke, the traditional head cover of Jews, waved a red scarf at a helicopter hovering overhead as Arab ambulance attendants rushed the wounded into their vehicles...
...pronunciation is tricky. So are the provenance and political implication of the scarf on sale from sidewalk vendors all over the East Coast. Say ka- fee-a, and the sound will be right. Wear the large, brightly checked square of cotton around the neck, shawl style over the shoulders or wrapped around the head, and the look will be perfect 1988 American street style. It is also what millions of Americans see on their TV screens practically every night, worn by Palestinians defying Israeli soldiers in the occupied territories...
...Herman Ruether, interim director of the Chicago-based Palestine Human Rights Campaign, heard that the kaffiyeh was becoming fashionable, he said, "I started talking to people at random." The results of Ruether's informal poll: only three out of ten people cited politics as their reason for wearing the scarf. He adds, however, that during the most & recent episodes of violence in Israeli-occupied areas, his office received a large number of calls from Americans sympathetic to the Palestinian cause inquiring where kaffiyehs could be bought...
...kaffiyeh came to the U.S. via Europe, where, in all its checkered permutations (black, blue, green, red or purple on white), it is almost as ubiquitous among the young as fatigue jackets. Yasser Arafat has worn a kaffiyeh, usually with army duds, for 20 years now, and the scarf became a garment of choice among the political protesters and antimissile advocates of the '70s and early '80s. Fashion, of course, mutes political reverberation. With time the kaffiyeh became politically neutral and lost some of its freshness. But the current televised spectacle of kaffiyeh-wearing rebels playing hob with the Israeli...
...attempted Stateside. But Ruether suggests that heavy sales of the scarves, mostly made in Jordan, Syria and the West Bank, could be a small economic boon to the Palestinians. Such social considerations still take a backseat to fashion. "Hey," says Gene Bursage, 19, of Brooklyn, who has worn his scarf every day, and in every temperature, since he bought it last November. "It's a scarf, that's what it is, that's all it is. What did you say it was called again...