Since October 7 there has been a steady stream of reports about the kufiya: their growing use and visibility, and, in response, efforts to squelch or silence or even arrest people for wearing them. I'm too overwhelmed to keep a full accounting, but occasionally I will try to post about the phenomenon. Here's one incident. Layla is a grad student in Social Work at Columbia, very active on Twitter/X and elsewhere.
October 7 and its aftermath have produced multiple kufiya spottings, and a fair bit of news coverage. I've been too overwhelmed by the events to get on the blog to write about it. I will try to make more of an effort in future, but all I can promise is dribs and drabs. This represents some housekeeping, in fact, a photo that has been on my hard drive for some time but never managed to post.
John Lennon spent some time in Bermuda in 1980. A friend sent me this photo, found on reddit. The description says only this: "new release photo, on deck, Bermuda June 1980." Do we presume then that John was on some yacht, and needed to cover himself from the sun, or protect himself from the wind. And why did he use a kufiya? Kufiyas were starting to become somewhat common street wear in US urban areas by the early eighties, as I've written about elsewhere, so I guess it was simply something he came across in New York City, where he lived. That's all I've got! Check out the photo:
My book chapter, "The Kufiya," published in Asef Bayat and Linda Herrera, Global Middle East: Into the Twenty-First Century, University of California Press, 2021, is now available here, as a pdf.
Note that there is even a kufiya on the cover of the book! (On the shoulders of Edward Said, from a mural.)
Note too that if you search this blog there is lots of kufiya/kaffiyeh/keffiyeh content.
My 1992 article, “Seeing Double: Palestinian-American Histories of the Kufiya,” published in Michigan Quarterly Review 31(4): 557-577, can now be found here, as a pdf. It also appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review's 60th anniversary issue--60(1): 341-362 in 2021.
The last video shown yesterday (June 13) at the House January 6 hearings featured several insurrectionists explaining that they were present at the Capitol that day because Trump had called them to it. I think this is the last of the insurrectionists interviewed. I noticed that he was wearing a kufiya, but didn't manage to get my camera out in time to take a picture. Luckily my very alert friend Tim did, and he sent this photo to me.
I've written rather extensively about the push by the Palestinian rebels to impose kufiyas on Palestinian males at the height of the 1936-39 revolt, in fall 1938. And I just came across another story about those events, courtesy Zeina Ghandour's A Discourse on Domination in Mandate Palestine: Imperialism, Property and Insurgency (Routledge 2010). This is from her interview with Said Hassan Me'ary, originally from the village of Sha'b, in the Acre district, found on page 113.
As is often the case, someone sent this to me (thanks, can't remember who did!), and it took some time for me to get around to posting.
In Berlin the popo are keeping a close watch on kufiya wearers.
The kufiya, they seem to have determined, is a sign of anti-Semitism.
(posted May 20, 2022)
The #NoDAPL movement is doing more than bringing people from all walks of life together, it's helping to usher in new ones. Independent journalist Mary Annette Pember reports on the birth of the first baby at the water protector camps in North Dakota:
For Zintkala Mahpiya Wi Blackowl, Sky Bird Woman, the birth of her baby girl at one of the water protector camps in North Dakota was the ultimate act of resistance. Baby, as yet unnamed, was born early in the morning in a tipi on October 12 directly into her mother’s arms as their family slept nearby. The family’s tipi is pitched alongside the Cannonball River. Baby is healthy and thriving. Blackowl plans to take her to Indian Health Service this week for a well-baby check-up. “I birthed her by myself,” said Blackowl, of the Sicangu and Ihanktonwan Lakota tribes. Although her husband and family were sleeping in the same tipi, the birth was a private event. In the traditional Lakota way, the mother gives birth alone. “That space in which we give birth is so holy,” she said. “At one time our people realized that.”
The source is here.
His archive of photos, from his time in Palestine between 1921 and 1923, is quite remarkable. I particularly like this one, as it shows a kufiya pattern unlike anything I've ever seen before.
For more on Scholten:
Simon Peres, former Israeli PM, former president of Israel, former Defense Minister of Israel, and oh so respected in US official circles, on what he thought of Palestinians wearing kufiyas and tarbushes, when he landed up in Palestine in 1934. From his 1995 book, Battling for Peace.
This is from the anthropologist Sharif Kanaana's article, "Survival Strategies of Arabs in Israel," published in Merip Reports #41 (October 1975). It is based on research he conducted in Israel in 1969-70 for his dissertation. Kanaana received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Hawaii. Kanaana began his teaching career at Birzeit University in 1975; he has since retired, I'm not sure what year.
The quote is from his discussion of what he calls the "middle peasant" survival strategy of the Arabs in Israel. (Interestingly, he does not use the term, "Palestinian," which has more recently become the preferred nomenclature: rather than "Arabs in Israel" (state language), "Palestinian-Israelis" or, "Palestinian citizens of Israel."
I'd love to find some photographs of Israel's Palestinian Communists garbed in kufiyas, from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. If you've got a clue as to where I might find some, please let me know.
I'm sorry, I didn't keep track of the source, but the first image has been posted via rightwing websites and social media outlets. It's interesting, as it combines imagery of the USA patriot of 1776, in his tricorne cap, with the kufiya, often worn by rightwing militia types in the US, as I've documented in previous posts. The second image (again, I didn't keep good records) shows some armed men, exercising their 'free speech' rights not to wear masks and to carry guns in a USA café, spring of 2020.
