Hats fast disappearing from our midst
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A joke about a woman in her eighties who was standing on the back deck of a steamer: A wind blew and framed her dress and she almost involuntarily held on to her hat, so a woman standing next to her asked her why she was so concerned about her hat, and not herself. And she replied that she was eighty years old. As for the hat, it was two days old, and she bought it for eighty dollars!
A few days ago, I was watching a documentary film about the celebrations of major European cities, at the end of World War II, of the victory over Nazism. Hats of all kinds caught my eye, on almost everyone’s heads. But today we see that all these hats have completely disappeared from people’s lives, except for a few heads with a baseball cap or another light straw cap, often to protect them from the sun or rain.
The disappearance of the hat in Europe was often followed by the disappearance of similar head coverings in the cultures of other countries, including our countries, where the Turkish hats and fezzes disappeared, and with them the professions of their manufacture in Egypt, Iraq and the Levant, unlike the hats of Al-Azhar men and Shiite clerics.
But the inhabitants of many nations, especially the cold countries, still keep their hats, or head coverings, even today. Also, you rarely find a citizen in the length and width of the Arabian Peninsula and its outskirts of the plains and valleys of Iraq, the Levant and Jordan without a head covering, and often to protect the face from the sun and dust, during storms, compared to the fur hats worn by people living in cold weather countries, or the broad hats preferred by residents of Southeast Asia where monsoons batter their nations almost round the year.
The shape, type and material of the hat differ from one region to another, and from time to time, according to the availability of its materials, industry or the nature of its climate. We also find that military hats differ in their shapes, in the army and police, from one country to another, and it is often easy to distinguish the hats of the armies of major countries.
In Europe, and other Western countries, women wearing of the hat have become a fashion, although its use is steadily declining. Ultra-Orthodox Jews also wear the cap out of great respect for God, which is what women follow in many Christian churches, especially during Communion.
The Sikh faith also required all its male followers to wear a turban, and their insistence on it forced the British authorities to allow them to keep it while serving in the military in place of the famous Scottish hat or cap.
In ‘royal’ Egypt, it was rare to see a man without a head covering, but after the military coup, and with the decline in the fashion of wearing the hat in Europe, everyone within a short period of time lost the taste for a hat. We also find it at the head of every conservative Muslim man in Southeast Asian countries, especially while performing prayers or on religious occasions.
Although some cultures required wearing the hat as a form of showing respect to others, in other cultures, removing it from the logic of respect is prevalent, as in the Christian West.
The etiquette or court rules in most countries of the world also require removing of the hat or the headscarf during funerals, when the national anthem is heard, in court, and in the presence of heads of state.
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By Ahmed alsarraf
This news has been read 21728 times!
