Mr. Saifudin, with a shemagh casually draped around his shoulders, holds up a stack of fresh bills and sports a mischievous grin on his face.
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"The idea came to me after I saw pictures of celebrities who visited our region and tried to wear the shemagh (headdress for men), yet never mastered it," Alharthy recalls.
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The tasseled red-and-white Jordanian shemagh is much thicker than the untasseled red-and-white shemagh seen in Persian Gulf countries. In Egypt, the keffiyeh and the agal is worn by Bedouins specially in the Sinai Peninsula. It is also sometimes tied into a turban in varying styles. In Yemen, the keffiyeh is used extensively in both red-white and black-white pattern.
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Czech street punk wearing kutte and shemagh, 2009. During the early 1980s, some street punks and Oi! skinheads adopted elements of the dress style from the film A Clockwork Orange. On stage, bands like The Adicts, or more recently The Bolokos and Japan's Hat Trickers, often wear bowler hats, white shirts, white trousers, braces, and black combat boots in imitation of Alex De Large, the protagonist of the film and novel.
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Roughly speaking: Ordinary keffiyeh A piece of white/orange/black cloth made from wool and cotton, worn primarily by Palestinians. Shalls/Musar A traditional scarf originated from Yemen, usually made of cotton or flax and decorated with many colors, but usually red and white; worn primarily by Yemen, & Oman. Shemagh A plain piece of cloth worn by the Arabian Gulf. Dastmaal YazdiThe King of Morocco wearing a rezzah A traditional scarf in Iran, originally from the Yazd region of Iran.
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The keffiyeh is worn by men of all ages, whether on the head or around the shoulders. habit In Jordan, the red-and-white keffiyeh is strongly associated with the country and its heritage, because the red color was introduced by the Jordanian Bedouins under British rule, where it is known as the shemagh mhadab. The Jordanian keffiyeh has decorative cotton or wool tassels on the sides; the bigger these tassels, the greater the garment's supposed value and the status of the person wearing it. It has long been worn by Bedouins and villagers and used as a symbol of honor and/or tribal identification.
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La Yekthar's most popular video has received over five million views. In terms of content, Albutairi has explained that the show deals symbolically with some socio- political issues in Saudi Arabia: "Each character kind of represents a socio- political issue." These include corruption, symbolized by "a tall guy who wears a shemagh;" unemployment represented by "a guy who wears a ragged thobe and carries a green folder;" and traffic problems symbolized by "a guy chained to a concrete block, the sort found in road works." The success of the show has allowed for the foundation of Telfaz11, a network for distributing online entertainment content, and the creation of a spin-off YouTube show entitled Temsa7LY, created entirely for the crocodile puppet character that was first featured on La Yekthar.
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Yemeni man wearing a keffiyeh on his head and a Shal on his shoulder The keffiyeh or kufiya ( ', meaning "from the city of Kufa" (); plural '), also known as a ghutrah (), shemagh ( '), ' (), mashadah (), chafiye (), dastmal yazdi (, destmal yezdî) or cemedanî (), is a traditional Arabian headdress, or what is sometimes called a habit, that originated in the Arabian Peninsula, and is now worn throughout the Middle-East region. It is fashioned from a square scarf, and is usually made of cotton. The keffiyeh is commonly found in arid regions, as it provides protection from sunburn, dust and sand. Toward the end of the 1980s, the keffiyeh became a fashion accessory in the United States and, during the early 2000s it became very popular among teenagers in Tokyo, Japan, where it is often worn with camouflage-style clothing.
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