Deborah Rodriguez's book, a high tale of determination, challenge, love and heartache, could easily be fiction. It is not. The Kabul Beauty School is the true story of an American woman who catapulted herself from Holland, Michigan to Kabul, Afghanistan. Rodriguez came to Afghanistan in 2002 with an American organisation that deals with emergency situations. At the introduction session, she said that she was a hairdresser, and was greeted by thunderous applause. Everyone, no matter where they are, needs haircuts, and Rodriguez realised that, despite her training in other forms of life-support work, it was her hairdressing skills that were more in demand.
Gregarious by nature, she soon turned her attention to getting to know Afghans who spoke some English. Out of these meetings and her own professional background was born the idea of a beauty school, which she launched upon leaving her job. (The first school was on the grounds of the Ministry of Women, which she had to vacate after one day finding herself and her supplies abruptly locked out.) Rodriguez developed close friendships with many Afghan women, who shared with her personal stories of the tyranny of the Taliban from which they had recently escaped. It is these stories that make up the crux of Rodriguez's book.
This writer, too, has spent time in Kabul over the past several years, and first visited Rodriguez's beauty parlour, Oasis, in April 2006. It took my friend and I forever to find the salon, as houses in Kabul have neither names nor numbers – for security reasons, it is said. Along the route, we called Rodriguez multiple times to make sure we were headed the right way. After we finally arrived, as my friend got a haircut, I sipped some tea and looked around, taking in the atmosphere. Rodriguez herself was well built, wore slacks and a blouse, and had wild red hair. Her presence and charisma were striking, her energy infectious. During her cigarette break, we were treated to parts of her story, much of which can now be found in her book.
There were about six Afghan women who spoke some English, and who were engaged in various tasks around the salon – cleaning, sweeping hair off the floor, answering the phone. The salon looked and felt like something out of an Arabian Nights set. Egyptian heliographs were painted across the walls, in bright colours. These, I discovered later upon reading Rodriquez's book, were painted by an American friend who had come for a visit.