The Keffiyeh

During my Freshman year at the International School of Berne, there was a High Schooler named Michael Morris who was the coolest guy in school.  He wore his hair long but only long enough to be cool, not long enough to be a hippie.  He played drums in a band.  He had a cool English accent.  He wore denim overalls with a leather jacket and a black and white check scarf from the East that he wrapped around his neck in a cool, groovy fashion.  He was laid back, zen, unflappable, and everyone liked him.  And I don’t know how or why but he took an interest in me and let me hang out with him.  I got to go to his band rehearsals and watch him play the drums, and even though it was four decades ago, I can still hear the precise rhythm of his licks in my mind, as clearly as though they were yesterday.

I wanted to be like Mike Morris.

I asked him about the fascinating scarf that he wore, one day, while hanging out with him and the other Upper Classmen.  Lisa Wherli said, “That’s his tablecloth.”  I didn’t understand.  Was it really a tablecloth?  Did you make a scarf out of a tablecloth?  “No,” explained Lisa Wherli, “That’s just what I call it.”

“It’s a keffiyeh,” said Mike.  “It’s a scarf worn in Arabia to protect people from the sun.”

I wanted one.  I wanted one just like Mike.  And I got one, just like Mike, in black and white checks, and I asked him to show me how he tied it, which he, obligingly, did, with a smile on his face and kind eyes.  I wore my keffiyeh for many years (indeed, there are scads and scads of photos of me, over the decades, wearing my keffiyeh with the denim Levi’s jacket I got when I was sixteen - which I also wore for decades, until it was falling off of me and had to be discarded.)

There came a day when My Mam asked to borrow the keffiyeh.  She liked it, and we often traded off clothing, so anytime that Mama wanted to wear, to keep, to have anything of mine, I acquiesced.  Goodbye keffiyeh, you was a good old keffiyeh.

Still, even though I had given Mama my scarf, there was no reason why I shouldn’t still have one - so I went shopping.  I searched high and lo for a new black and white keffiyeh but I found none.  I looked over hill and dale, I looked under Roy and Dale, I looked in every shop in Manhattan for a black and white keffiyeh, but all I found was red and white, so I supposed it was time for a change of color.  Mama would wear black and white and I would wear red and white, and that would be that.

As time passed, our scarves grew old, worn, permanently faded, and brown.  They were well-loved and became increasingly less active in our mutual wardrobes, and life went on.

My parents adore to travel.  During my first fifteen or so years in New York City, Me Father and Mother traveled quite a bit and, as I worked from home and could set my own schedule, I was always available and ready to fly to Texas for a week of living with my brother Jimmy, who never lived anywhere but with Mom and Dad, so that they could care for him.  One of the trips they made during those years was one to Egypt.  Their friends cautioned them against traveling in the East because, after all, it was shortly after 911 that they planned their journey.  Friends said it wasn’t safe to fly, it wasn’t safe for Americans to travel that part of the world, it wasn’t safe, it wasn’t safe, it wasn’t safe.  My parents, never ones to allow others to make their decisions for them, traveled to the East and had a marvelous time.  They came home with big photography coffee table books of the places they visited and many photos of themselves against the beautiful sights that they saw.  There was no issue, there were no troubles.  There was only joy.

Mama brought me home three gifts - two of these gifts were boxes from the region (Mama knew that I had started collecting boxes after my friend Paul Tigue gave me a couple, as gifts) and one was a brand new keffiyeh, complete with an agal, to hold the garment in place.  I had never had an agal before because I had never worn my keffiyeh on my head, only around my neck.  I was so grateful to Mommy for thinking of me, for caring enough to bring me gifts, and for giving me presents that told me that she knows me, that she sees me.  The two boxes went right into my collection, one becoming my personal jewelry box, where I kept those special items of jewelry that I wore on particular occasions of note, and the other becoming more of a decorative piece because it was a puzzle box that took some effort to get open.  I love those boxes and look at them once a day.

The keffiyeh was another matter.

In the years since ISB and Mike Morris, times changed, they changed greatly.  People were more aware, more conscious, more sensitive… or, at least, this person was.  One of the phrases that had, firmly, taken root in my consciousness was cultural appropriation.  I had been guilty of this in the past, especially when it came to my black friends, who used certain words and phrases, inflections and cadences that I had tried on for size because of their influence, but that I had come to understand were not mine to use.  It took some doing, expurgating this vernacular from my personal lexicon, but I did it.  I was living a life in which I was aware of things, and one of the things of which I was, acutely, aware was that I could not possibly wear a keffiyeh in public.  So I took my original black and white keffiyeh (which Mama had returned to me), my second red and white keffiyeh, and my brand new keffiyeh, and I bundled them up and put them in a drawer.  I would not dispose of them - my associations with them were too strong, and, because it was a gift from My Mam, I wore the new keffiyeh one time, and one time only, for a photo.

I often think of the Egyptian trip and how my parents went ahead with their plans, against other peoples’ admonishments, about how they threw themselves into the adventure, and how Mama brought me home those gifts, with such pride for having chosen things that she knew I would like.  I also think of the Egyptian trip because of a story Mama told me, during our post-trip debriefing.

There was security, naturally, everywhere they went.  The security, naturally, was very stern men in uniforms who wanted to search every bag, every purse, every item, carefully, meticulously, studiously.  In those days, Mama had taken to wearing a fanny pack.  When the security guards asked to search her fanny pack, she always took it off, handed it to them, they unzipped it, and handed it, immediately, right back.

“Stevie,” she told me, “I could have been smuggling anything I wanted in or out of the country with that fanny pack.  They never reached inside to dig around and see what I was carrying in it.”

“Why didn’t they?”

“Because when they unzipped the fanny pack, the first thing they saw was my feminine napkins, and that scared them, so they just zipped it and gave the bag back to me.”

My Mam could always be counted upon to put everything in just the right frame.