The keffiyeh might be the perfect summertime scarf, large, lightweight and light-colored.  I love mine, purchased at Camden Market for two quid, and carry it with me through the week.  It’s easy to forget that the scarf is part of the traditional Arab headware for men and sometimes associated, negatively, with Yasser Arafat and the PLO.  Balenciaga made a high fashion version in 2007, with enameled metal coins dripping alluringly from the edges, and Keira Knightley wore it in Vogue.  Chain retailers like H&M, Topman and Sears (really) have sold them.  And they’ve been become, along with fake Chanel sunglasses and five dollar umbrellas, a staple for New York street vendors.  Rachel Ray wore a keffiyeh in a Dunkin Donuts commercial a while ago and got into a spot of trouble.  But, largely, like camouflage pants, the keffiyeh has lost its political charge.

Then this summer a cab driver who’d immigrated from Palestine noticed my scarf and asked my pointblank about my political allegiances.  I was spooked and set it aside for a while, but not for terribly long.  I’ve looked at it more closely and know that it’s not a “real,” artisinal, heirloom-quality keffiyeh.  It’s got a very simple pattern, a crooked hem, and huge flaws in the weaving.  I’m not concerned that the scarf is radical or countercultural.  (If it made it’s way into Rachel Ray wardrobe, it’s certainly not.)  But now each time I put it on I remember that it means something different to people who wear it traditionally.  I can’t put mine down, and yet I just can’t shake the feeling that it’s a fashion faux pas.