Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil (Paperback)

by Deborah Rodriguez (Author), Kristin Ohlson (Author)
Key Phrases: nika khat, perm solution, diamond smuggler, Achmed Zia, Peacock Manor, Papa Sam (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A terrific opening chapter—colorful, suspenseful, funny—ushers readers into the curious closed world of Afghan women. A wedding is about to take place, arranged, of course, but there is a potentially dire secret—the bride is not technically a virgin. How Rodriguez, an admirably resourceful and dynamic woman, set to marry a nice Afghan man, solves this problem makes a great story, embellished as it is with all the traditional wedding preparations. Rodriguez went to Afghanistan in 2002, just after the fall of the Taliban, volunteering as a nurse's aide, but soon found that her skills as a trained hairdresser were far more in demand, both for the Western workers and, as word got out, Afghans. On a trip back to the U.S., she persuaded companies in the beauty industry to donate 10,000 boxes of products and supplies to ship to Kabul, and instantly she started a training school. Political problems ensued ("too much laughing within the school"), financial problems, cultural misunderstandings and finally the government closed the school and salon—though the reader will suspect that the endlessly ingenious Rodriguez, using her book as a wedge against authority, will triumph in the end. This witty and insightful (if light) memoir will be perfect for women's reading groups and daytime talk shows. (Apr. 10)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–In 2002, just months after the Taliban had been driven out of Afghanistan, Rodriguez, a hairdresser from Holland, MI, joined a small nongovernmental aid organization on a mission to the war-torn nation. That visit changed her life. In Kabul, she chronicles her efforts to help establish the country's first modern beauty school and training salon; along with music and kite-flying, hairdressing had been banned under the previous regime. This memoir offers a glimpse into a world Westerners seldom see–life behind the veil. Rodriguez was entranced with the delightful personalities that emerged when her students removed their burqas behind closed doors, but her book is also a tale of empowerment–both for her and the women. In a city with no mail service, she went door-to-door to recruit students from clandestine beauty shops, and there were constant efforts to shut her down. She had to convince Afghan men to work side by side with her to unpack cartons of supplies donated from the U.S. The students, however, are the heroines of this memoir. Women denied education and seldom allowed to leave their homes found they were able to support themselves and their families. Rodriguez's experiences will delight readers as she recounts such tales as two friends acting as parents and negotiating a dowry for her marriage to an Afghan man or her students puzzling over a donation of a carton of thongs. Most of all, they will share her admiration for Afghan women's survival and triumph in chaotic times.–Pat Bangs, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (December 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812976738
• ISBN-13: 978-0812976731
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (113 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,788 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beauty in Conflict: The Kabul Beauty School, June 20, 2007

By	Anita Anand (New Delhi, India) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil (Hardcover)

A work of non-fiction Deborah Rodriguez's book could almost be fictional. Only that it isn't. It's a story about determination, challenge, love and heartache. It is the story of an American woman who catapulted herself from Holland, Michigan to Kabul, Afghanistan.

A maverick by nature, Rodriguez came to Afghanistan in 2002, with an American non-governmental organization (NGO) trained in emergencies. Also gregarious by nature, Rodriguez very early on turned her attention to befriending Afghans who spoke some English. Her checkered background in multitasking and a rich personal life helped her in being sought after what was badly need in Kabul - hairdressing. With this, she developed a deep bond with Afghan women, who were just coming out of the tyranny of living under the Taliban. Their heart rending stories are told poignantly by Rodriguez, throughout the book.

I lived in Kabul for a month in 2004 and for four months in 2006. I also went o Rodriguez's beauty parlour, Oasis, in April 2006, with a friend. It took us forever to find it, as houses have no names or numbers in Kabul (security reasons). I called her four times on her cell phone to get to the right place. I waited while my friend got a haircut, was served tea, and got a chance to observe my surroundings. She had a presence and charisma that was hard to miss. Her energy was infectious. When Rodriguez took a cigarette break, she told us parts of her story, all in the book.

I first read about The Kabul Beauty School in an opinion piece posted in the Kabul Guide e-list I subscribe to, a few months ago. It talked about how some people that worked with Rodriguez in starting the Beauty School felt they did not get the credit they deserved in the book. And, that in the beginning of the book (enjoyable and shocking to me) is a piece about Rodriguez helping an Afghan bride fake her virginity on her wedding night by providing her with a blood stained handkerchief. Shouldn't this be the mother's role, questioned the author of the article? I smiled as I read this.

There were so many roles for women (just as there are for men) in Afghanistan that it could get tiring. But, there are more expectations and restrictions when it comes to women. In most traditional societies in transition to modernity, these roles are shifting. Yet, both Afghans and non Afghans have a hard time with this. What to cling to, what to let go? What to support, what to oppose?

However, Rodriguez had little patience with all this questioning. With a fierce determination she dealt with men and women, ministries, bureaucracies, hoodlums, louts, children and older people. She wore her heart on her sleeve, and was not afraid to show her emotions - be it anger, frustration, love or appreciation. She was certainly not a coward.
She did some pretty unconventional things. Most of all, she married an Afghan, and became his second wife. The first wife, with her seven children, lived in Saudi Arabia. He supported her in many things and said no when he couldn't help her. While Rodriguez did a lot to blend in, she also held on dearly to what she believed in, from her background and upbringing.

Rodriguez weaves the book around her own story and those of the women she comes across in Afghanistan. Choosing to focus on setting up a beauty school, she opted to work with women most of the time. She loved them, got cross with them, and yelled at them. She cried with them, danced with them and got involved in their most intimate stories - from violence to sex.

Raised in a country where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are guaranteed in the constitution, Rodriguez was often outraged about what she discovered and experienced in Afghanistan. This is understandable. But, slowly she learned and adapted, often at a high cost to herself and others around her. However, that is the nature of life and work as an expatriate in Afghanistan or any other post conflict country. I myself made some mistakes in dealing with the Afghans I worked and interacted with. I too experienced all the emotions Rodriguez did.

Rodriguez ends her book in May 2006, just after riots and curfews in Kabul. I was in Kabul at that time. The women who have studied and graduated from her beauty school have gone their various paths - some to new lives and others back to the old ones (but as changed and economically independent persons, with a skill). Rodriguez's experience in Afghanistan transformed her life and the women around her. Her book is deeply personal and gives a pretty accurate picture of what goes on in today's Afghanistan.

There are whisperings (quietly and openly) that Rodriguez has betrayed and endangered the women of the beauty school - that they could be targeted by conservative elements. Also, about her going back on her promises of getting them out of the country to safe and greener pastures. And, was she going to share the profits of her book with the women whose stories she told?

Above the whispering and questioning, the truth is that the reality of Afghan woman can be changed by themselves -with some help from the Debbie Rodriguez' of the world. Just like development aid and expatriate technical assistance and expertise, it is only a helping hand to the Afghans. And, all this will take time. Decades of oppression from inside and outside Afghanistan, have left a deep impression on Afghan women and men, in separate ways. They suffered collectively and differently, each to their own, in their own way. I too, heard many of these stories. A great need in Afghanistan today is individual and collective healing. Rodriguez realised this and tried to do something about, in the way she knew best.

Rodriguez offered freedom and friendship, within the confines of Afghan society. More than that she could not do, and no outsider can. The book rings true, reads well, and is highly descriptive of a country and people Rodriguez was privileged to be part of. And, that, no one can take away from her. Just like no one can take away from the Afghan women what they got from Rodriquez.

63 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Has Life for Afghani Women Improved Because of Rodriguez?, September 27, 2007

By	Michele Cozzens "www.michelecozzens.com" (Cloud 8) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil (Hardcover)

I have mixed feelings about this book. It's easy to read and certainly provides an interesting and informative portrayal of what life is like for the women of Afghanistan. Unfortunatley, for me it dragged on in the end, and I started counting pages wondering when it would be over. There is one heartbreaking and shocking story after the next, and too many "characters" to wrap one's mind around. This mélange of stories primarily boils down to this: Terrorizing Men and Terrorized Women. I don't believe life for Afghani women has improved because of the Kabul Beauty School, and from what I understand, because of their portrayal in this book, some of the women are in more danger now that the book is out and Rodriguez has fled.

In the end, reading Kabul Beauty School did not elicit the feelings I thought it might, which was to have met an extraordinary, selfless woman who achieved a major accomplishment. Throughout the reading, I didn't understand or appreciate the author's motivation and, as a result, found it difficult to champion her cause. It's excellent memoir or journal material, but that's where the excellence ends. Does it entertain a broad audience? Absolutely not. In addition, there's a certain lack of credibility from the merely average writing skills of the author. In the retelling of this tale, Deborah Rodriguez often comes across as victim of circumstance. She makes a series of foolish choices particularly when it comes to marriage, acts rashly, and often irreverently, probably drinks too much and smokes. (This may be harsh, but these traits, to me, have nothing to do with "beauty.") For example, it doesn't make her the least bit likeable when we learn she verbally assaults a man at an outdoor market when he follows her around and grabs her backside. Embarrassing and endangering her closest friend (and translator) in the process, the friend tells her outright that she will "never go to the market with her again." Rodriguez brings her strong, independent and liberated American woman traits with her, wears them on her sleeve, and it does not earn her respect from the people around her, or from this reader. It makes her nickname "Crazy Debbie" perfectly understandable. Also, she lets her friends arrange a marriage for her, (and granted the presence of an Afghani husband, "Sam," does help her cause in one dangerous and surprising circumstance after another), but this man already has a wife, and we soon learn, a baby on the way. It's all very bizarre.

It feels as though Rodriguez returned to Afghanistan (after her first genuine venture there to provide aid after the ousting of the Taliban) in search of an extraordinary life rather than because she wanted to be the savior of Afghani women. I'm not saying this is true (I don't know this woman), but if the purpose of this book was to tell the world who she is and why she went to Afghanistan at great personal expense to become the director of a beauty school with the hope of making life better for the women there, she has been successful. The book, published by a major house, and the movie deal also deem her "successful." As for the school and the cause? A failure. She is not, like the book jacket indicates, living in Afghanistan and still running the school. According to an article on NPR, "the subjects of her book say Rodriguez and her newfound fame have put their lives in danger. They say they've seen none of the money or help to get them out of Afghanistan that Rodriguez promised them in exchange for having their stories appear in the book." Rodriguez counters by saying the women misunderstood what she promised them.

In spite of this rather negative review, I do think Kabul Beauty School is an EXCELLENT CHOICE for book clubs as it will no doubt, provoke a very interesting and thoughtful discussion about the lives of women living in Afghanistan, and whether or not the outside world should or shouldn't have something to say or do about this culture and the emancipation of women there. I also suggest Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time.

Michele Cozzens is the author of It's Not Your Mother's Bridge Club

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Misguided, Selfish American Ruins Afghan Lives, January 14, 2008

By	Gregory Bravo (Buffalo, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

First, the good:

The book is written in an informal, yet extremely engaging, style. It is well put-together. After I started reading it, I just wanted to keep reading until I finished. (I guess you could call that a "page-turner".)

Now, the bad:

The book starts out with great promise. The narrator is a hairdresser from Michigan who is having a difficult time extricating herself from an abusive marriage. (It is not clear to me why she doesn't just leave the guy, but that's OK. It seems to be a combination of abused wife reasons: money, psychological control. Common enough.) Then, for some reason that is never made clear, she gets the idea to use her beauty skills to travel to Afghanistan and help women there learn cosmetology. She has no money to do this, but ends up convincing a famous beauty supply company to fund her project.

She then makes the first of many selfish, and questionable, decisions revolving around responsability: She decides to move to Afghanistan. That would be fine if she was on her own--- but she isn't. She is a mother with small children. Moving to Afghanistan entails leaving her dependent children in the US without her. (It is never made clear who exactly is taking care of her children while she spends months at a time in Afghanistan. It is heartbreaking when later in the book one of her sons decides to move to Afghanistan just to be closer to her; she allows this, putting him into extreme danger. He then transfers to go to school in Cyprus just so he can be on the same continent; not long after he makes this life-altering decision, his mother abandons Afghanistan and moves back to the US. This is simply the first life of many she has irrevocably changed for the worse.)

This theme of abandonment of responsability caused by questionable, headstrong decisions is one that plays out with ever-increasing devastation as the book continues.

After arriving in Afghanistan, the author succeeds in starting the beauty school. There are many colorful anecdotes about life in Afghanistan, and the many colorful and interesting characters she meets. They are especially interesting since they are told from the perspective of an American woman. Unfortunately (as I should have gathered early in the book if I had been paying attention) this perspective is a subtle one of cultural superiority. (As an example, she lives in Afghanistan for over a year, and even by the end of the book, she has never bothered to learn any form of the local language. After YEARS there, she still gets by by speaking English, using friends as translators, and hand-gestures.)

She becomes "friends" with Afghan women who she trains in her beauty school. At first everything goes well--- the women love being independent and earning their own money--- but she soon comes up against
cultural norms that threaten the school. This is not unexpected, of course. However, she deals with most of these with little cultural perspective, and which put the Afghan women under her tutelage in personal danger time and again.

Somewhere along the way, she meets an Afghan man at a dinner with friends; without either of them speaking the other's language, she agrees to marry him and become his second wife only a few WEEKS after they meet. She knows nothing about this man, yet agrees to marry him mere weeks after they meet! (Another questionable, headstrong decision, which will end badly.)

Near the end of the book, she travels one last time to Afghanistan. A lot of troubles have ensued, the beauty shop is basically closed, a lot of the women who she has dragged into her little experiment are now in danger for their lives. She decides to leave Afghanistan almost immediately, saying only that she felt danger and had to get away. She doesn't explain this at all in the book. She abandons the beauty school, the Afghan women who were her "friends", and her new Afghan husband as well-- leaving him and them without so much as a goodbye or explanation for her abandonment. It is never explained why she does this in the book, either-- but seems par for the course given her previous actions.

Even worse is what happens when she returns to the US. She basically stops calling and helping her Afghan friends. The women she brought into the beauty school rightly feel abandoned. Some of them are now political refugees in other countries because they are in danger for their lives in Afghanistan. (Even if she can't help them financially, she still hasn't even bothered CALLING them in over a year. In a recent interview in the Chicago Tribune, she questions: "When is enough enough?" Apparently after you write a bestseller and ink a movie deal after destroying dozens of lives and livelihoods.)

By the end of the book, I was left with a feeling of disquiet and unease. I really wanted to like the author (she comes across as very dynamic and engaging)-- let's be honest, it takes a certain dynamic personality to pull something like this off. Personality-wise, I ALMOST liked her. But I finally had to conclude that-- whether accidentally or purposefully--- she is also the type of person with no self-awareness, a high degree of selfishness (which is even more dangerous because she doesn't see it!), and headstrong tendencies and disregard for others that leave devastation in her wake no matter where she goes. A walking tornado.

I am giving the book three stars because it works AS A BOOK: It really kept me engaged and made me want to read it to the end.

However, it sort of left me feeling like I might feel after eating a gallon of ice cream at one sitting: Kind of uncomfortable, nauseous and, in the end, sick at heart.