Wiktionary
n. A cloth worn on the head and about the neck by some Arabs, both indoors and out.
Wikipedia
The keffiyeh or kufiya ( , meaning "from the city of Kufa" ; plural ), also known as a ghutrah , shemagh ( ), , mashadah , chafiye or cemedanî , is a traditional Middle Eastern headdress fashioned from a square scarf, usually made of cotton. It is typically worn by Arabs, as well as Kurds.
It is commonly found in arid regions as it provides protection from sunburn, dust and sand. Its distinctive standard woven checkered pattern may have originated in an ancient Mesopotamian representation of either fishing nets or ears of grain, but the true origin of the pattern remains unknown.
Toward the end of the 1980s, the keffiyeh became a fashion accessory in the United States and, during the 2000s, it became very popular among adolescents in Tokyo, where it was often worn with camouflage-style clothing.
Usage examples of "keffiyeh".
Abu Musa spread himself and his pale blue galabieh over the rest of the seat, a dazzling white keffiyeh on his head for the occasion, set at a rakish angle above his hawklike face.
On the other side of the well, back under the trees, four swarthy men in dirty keffiyehs squatted, watching him with dark eyes that shifted greedily to his horse.
There were singles, couples, entire families, blacks and whites and Asians and Latinos and four towering Samoan men all with black porkpie hats, beautiful sloe-eyed women willow graceful in their turquoise or ruby or sapphire saris, others in chadors and others in jeans, men in business suits, men in shorts and bright Polo shirts, four young Hasidic Jews arguing (but joyfully) over the most mystical of all documents (a Los Angeles freeway map), uniformed soldiers, giggling children and shrieking children and two placid octogenarians in wheelchairs, a pair of tall Arab princes in akals and keffiyehs and flowing jellabas, preceded by fierce bodyguards and trailed by retinues, beacon-red tourists drifting homeward on the astringent fumes of medicated sunburn lotion, pale tourists arriving with the dampish smell of cloudy country clinging to them -and, like a white boat strangely serene in a typhoon, the man in the Panama hat sailing imperiously through the polygenic sea.
There were singles, couples, entire families, blacks and whites and Asians and Latinos and four towering Samoan men all with black porkpie hats, beautiful sloe-eyed women wil-low graceful in their turquoise or ruby or sapphire saris, others in chadors and others in jeans, men in business suits, men in shorts and bright Polo shirts, four young Hasidic Jews argu-ing (but joyfully) over the most mystical of all documents (a Los Angeles freeway map), uniformed soldiers, giggling children and shrieking children and two placid octogenarians in wheel-chairs, a pair of tall Arab princes in akals and keffiyehs and flowing jellabas, preceded by fierce bodyguards and trailed by retinues, beacon-red tourists drifting homeward on the astrin-gent fumes of medicated sunburn lotion, pale tourists arriving with the dampish smell of cloudy country .
There were singles, couples, entire families, blacks and whites and Asians and Latinos and four towering Samoan men all with black porkpie hats, beautiful sloe-eyed women willow graceful in their turquoise or ruby or sapphire saris, others in chadors and others in jeans, men in business suits, men in shorts and bright Polo shirts, four young Hasidic Jews arguing (but joyfully) over the most mystical of all documents (a Los Angeles freeway map), uniformed soldiers, giggling children and shrieking children and two placid octogenarians in wheelchairs, a pair of tall Arab princes in akals and keffiyehs and flowing jellabas, preceded by fierce bodyguards and trailed by retinues, beacon-red tourists drifting homeward on the astringent fumes of medicated sunburn lotion, pale tourists arriving with the dampish smell of cloudy country clinging .