Thanks to the business sense of two brothers from the southern West Bank city of Hebron, the traditional black-and-white kaffiyeh headscarf has discovered a new lease of life.
In 1961, their father Yasser Hirbawi, who sold kaffiyehs he brought from Syria and Jordan, decided to set up his own production line.
When the factory began, two employees managed two looms to produce the famous black-and-white patterned headscarf.
Today, his sons head a business that employs 15 people and exports kaffiyehs worldwide, all of them bearing the logo: Made in Palestine.
Each year, they sell around 30,000 scarves, of which 2 or 3 percent are sold locally while the rest, most of which are ordered online, go overseas, with the main markets in Italy, France and Germany, according to Juda Hirbawi.
Ironically, it was the British who turned the kaffiyeh into a widespread symbol of resistance during the time of Palestine under their mandate (1920-1948), says Abdelaziz al-Karaki, 61, who has spent more than four decades working in the Hirbawi factory.
“They said that anyone who wore the Bedouin scarf was an opponent and suddenly everyone started wearing them,” he said.
But the kaffiyeh’s appearance on the international scene can be put down to the influence of one man: Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian leader and icon of the resistance who was hardly ever pictured without his trademark headscarf.
Thanks to him, the headscarf was pictured at the United Nations, on the White House lawn and in Oslo when Arafat was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Israel’s Shimon Peres and the late Yitzhak Rabin for their Middle East peace efforts.
And it is a portrait of the late leader in his kaffiyeh which greets visitors at the entrance to Hirbawi’s factory.
“Arafat used to offer a kaffiyeh to all his distinguished visitors and today kaffiyehs from our factory are still offered by his successor Mahmoud Abbas,” Juda said, speaking over the roar of the looms, which are now automated.
At the start of the last decade, in the face of strong competition from China and India who were selling kaffiyehs at a third of the price, he decided to shut down the factory.
“They literally flooded the market. With their prices, we just couldn’t compete,” he told AFP.
It was a tough decision for a family whose production line had lived through decades of conflict and the first Palestinian uprising (1987-93) and had survived the rigors of daily life in the Israeli-occupied territories.
Although the factory was closed for five years, it gave them time to devise a new strategy, and the factory has now made a big comeback.
“We could never beat them on price, so we decided to focus all our efforts on quality,” said Juda, who has to import all his raw materials for lack of local alternatives, from thread to the automatic looms.
As well as quality, they have had to adapt the kaffiyeh to international demands.
“Foreigners want different colors so we have had to revisit the traditional style,” he said.
Hard at work, the looms are fitted with not only the traditional black and white thread but also red for the Jordanian version.
From turquoise and petrol blue, to pearl grey and lemon yellow, these days the kaffiyeh comes in all hues and shades.
And it’s not only used as a scarf. It can be worn as a tunic, reworked as a shoulder bag or transformed into pockets.
This eye-catching fabric with its chequered effect has spread far and wide. Whether it is dancers on TV, U.S. rap artists filming a video, or Palestinians competing in the Arab Idol talent show, they are all wearing the scarf.
This revival of sorts has drawn some measure of skepticism among those who have never stopped wearing it.
“It is the symbol of Palestine,” said Abu Fahmi al-Kisswani, a Palestinian from occupied East Jerusalem.
“For some people it’s perhaps just a fashion accessory,” explained Maria, a woman from Uruguay who had just purchased a scarf in Jerusalem’s Old City.
For her, the kaffiyeh means more than that: It is a way of “showing solidarity with the Palestinians.”
Down a neighboring alleyway, Yussef Sinjlawi has just sold three kaffiyehs. Tourists, he said, are keen to take them home as a memento.
“Some tourists don’t want to pay too much, so we offer them kaffiyehs for 25-30 shekels ($7.50)” which are Chinese- or Indian-made, whereas a “good quality kaffiyeh costs 70-80 shekels,” explained Bassem Barakat who has worked as a shopkeeper in the Old City for three decades.
“It’s up to them to choose.”
Barakat himself has already made his choice.
“Like all Palestinians, I have my kaffiyeh – and it comes from Hebron,” he said.
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