Woman's scarf (lahfe)

In San'a, married Jewish women would drape a rectangular scarf over their hoods whenever they left the house. It would cover the head, shoulders, and part of the back. Whenever a man crossed her path a Jewish woman would conceal the lower part of her face with the scarf, a practice that was probably influenced by the custom of Muslim women to veil the entire face. The color and design of the scarf were produced by dyeing the original off-white cotton cloth red and then black, by means of a reverse block-printing technique. This would result in a black central panel with eight large red-and-white roundels distributed evenly across , resembling stars in a black sky, framed on all four sides by a thin band of roundels in red and off-white, dotted with flowers or stars. The scarf worn by older women featured oval rather than round patterns, and was humorously referred to as the "cross-eyed scarf" (lahfe hawleh). The two short sides of the scarf are framed by a wide trellis pattern composed of symmetrically arranged floral motifs, in red and off-white.